On Monday of last week, Instagram was down for more than five hours along with all other Facebook-owned applications. A representative from Facebook said the company was dealing with an internal issue and it had not been hacked.
When the network was back up, Instagram users were posting how they spent their day without their “favorite” social media app. This included running jokes about how people were “forced” to interact with reality outside of the applications that they were without for a good part of the day.
“I really spent my day using other apps trying to compensate for the lack of IG [Instagram],” Laumaur Lindsay, a FAMU student, said. “I am so used to mindlessly scrolling through the app, that it’s really just become a pastime rather than a thing I do to actually interact with people on the app.”
Mindlessly scrolling through apps such as Instagram is a phenomenon that many people participate in. Some even find it to be an addiction that comes with the territory of social media and its constant expansion.
But this addiction can be causing students to fall short when it comes to their academic studies. Students are getting distracted by notifications, advertisements and other things that come with the apps.
As well as scrolling mindlessly during the day, students have the tendency to scroll right before they go to bed, thus distracting them from what they were supposed to be doing, which is getting a good rest before the next school or work day.
“I spent my day catching up on my work honestly,” Juliana Olodude, a FAMU student, said. “It was one of those days that I was feeling extremely motivated and productive. The fact that the app was down was a plus. I use other social media apps, but none of them more than Instagram. Not having the need to scroll through my phone eliminated procrastination and one of the distractions that I would usually have doing my work for class.”
With studying, it is important that students eliminate distractions to make sure that they are retaining the needed information. In addition to distractions that come with social media, college comes with a plethora of new and exciting experiences that can end up being distractions, especially for freshmen.
A majority of the students used social networking sites, the authors of the Saudi Journal of Biological Sciences, reported. “Excessive social media use for non-academic purpose distracted them from their learning and academic activities and delayed their bed time, which in turn reduced their sleep duration.”