CMST 301 Research Paper: The Distracting Impact of Social Media

This research paper investigates the impact of social media as a distraction, focusing on its effects on individuals, organizations, and academic performance. It examines how multitasking, driven by social media addiction, affects work accuracy and efficiency, particularly among students and employees. The study references research highlighting the negative impacts on language skills, mental health, and overall well-being. It concludes that excessive social media use significantly distracts individuals from daily activities, reducing work efficiency and necessitating a reevaluation of digital media's role in modern life. The paper also emphasizes the importance of understanding both the advantages and disadvantages of social media in digital communication courses.

Running head: DISTRACTION CAUSED BY SOCIAL AND DIGITAL MEDIA
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Section <add your section number>
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DISTRACTION CAUSED BY SOCIAL AND DIGITAL MEDIA

1Impact of digital media
Section 1:
In order to demonstrate the role of digital and social media on individuals,
organizations and companies, the topic of “Social Media as a Distraction” has been selected
for the research purpose.
While analysing the usage of social media it has been observed that there is a
significant impact of social media on people as they spent maximum time of a day on social
media activities. Based on some studies it has been observed that individuals like employs,
students as well as the householders are doing multi-tasking thinking that they are not
hampering their daily work. This social media addiction is also harmful to the human health
as they are crossing the road as well as driving with subconscious mind. Generally, based on
scientific studies it is impossible for human brains to do multi-tasking with high accuracy.
Thus, in order to analyse how social media is distracting the human life, this research has
been focused on the people who does multi-tasking most of the time in a day. Followed by
this report it has been further discussed that how much social media has hampered the normal
life style of peoples and how it has engaged the users from spending a normal life (Hajli,
2014).
Section 2:
While performing the investigation on the mentioned research topic various aspects of
distraction has been noticed. In order to get the accurate result of this research, it has mostly
focused on the college students and employs. While analysing the student activities it has
been observed that as most of the universities in United States has adopted the digital
learning process and provided internet access to the class rooms the students gets distracted
form the lectures and involve themselves into social media like Facebook, Twitter and
Instagram. Hence, as a result is has been noticed that their academics has got hampered,

2Impact of digital media
whereas they have denied that usage of social media all the time and doing multi-tasking has
not affected their daily work efficiency. After conducting a survey it has been observed that
people are confessing that they cannot even live a single day without their cell phones and
social media, rather than spending time with family and friends even kids are also spending
their most of the time in digital world like gaming, cartoon as well as social media. Even
during the office time the employs are doing several activities on social media like watching
videos on youTube and researching their personal queries which is entirely irrelevant to his
work, however these types of social media addiction is bothering their works they are still
denying it by expressing that they are expert at multi-tasking. This demonstration has also
covered how people are using their cell phones and earphone while crossing the road or even
driving a car, hence for this types of activities the chances of an accident and being injured is
high, excessive use of social media is an unhealthy practice for human health. Although
scientifically is has been proven that a human brain can accurately perform only one task at a
time, addicted social media users are not accepting that fact any way. In order to prove this
scientific belief with evidence, a survey has performed on two types of people one who do
multi-tasking and another one who does not opt for multi-tasking. After the survey it has been
proven that when a person is doing multi-tasking their work accuracy is very low and it is
consuming more time as the brain is shifting from one topic to another. This has a direct
effect on student’s academics as they are not putting their 100% attention on the lecture
rather than spending the time with chatting with friends or watching videos. Hence, excessive
use of social media is highly distracting people from their activities and duties.
While performing any course on digital and social media is it necessary to discuss
about its advantages and disadvantages. Thus, the selected topic is very much relevant to the
mentioned topic and essential to investigate.

3Impact of digital media
However, digital and social media has several advantages on daily life by connecting
them as well as updating them with new trends it also has several disadvantages like is how it
is effecting the daily life by distracting them from their regular activities. Now a days the
involvement of social media is highly increasing as people are getting attracted by it very
easily. Thus, in order to improve the work accuracy of people it is necessary to reduce the
impact of social media among the population. Thus, this research is very much relevant to the
topic Digital and Social Media as this investigation will help the universities and
organizations to analyse and rectify how social media is affecting the human decision,
individual activities and work efficiency.
Section 3:
Followed by the above researches, there are some other investigation has done in
order to validate the research. As the above discussion has already explored how digital
media and social media has distracted the daily activities and work efficiency of individuals,
organizations as well as universities. An additional research has done by (Aagaard, 2018) to
analyse how the social media texting and chatting has influenced the writing style and
speaking speed of any user. While conducting the survey it has been observed that the users
who are very much involved with social messaging and texting they follow some easy way to
type their messages in order to improve their communication rate. As there is a specific limit
of words in some social media platforms it is necessary to explain the whole thing in shortest
form. Thus, most of time it is not following the proper grammars as well as it omits the
vowels from the words. Impact of social media has shortened the phrases in order to reduce
the word space as example Laugh out loud has become LOL, Oh my god has become OMG,
Talk to you later has become TTYL. There is an another trick in order to reduce the word
space, by omitting the vowels from words such as Good morning has become Gd mrng, Good
night has become Gd nght. Thus, this investigation has helped to find how the above habits

4Impact of digital media
has distracted peoples and how it has influenced their daily life as this habits causes problem
while they are typing any assignment or writing any blog. This causes significant
grammatical error and invalid phrase representation. This has another effect on speaking
English as individuals are tend to increase the communication as they are habituated with
higher communication rate offered by Facebook, twitter and instagram.
In order to make this research more justified another effective analysis has took place,
which has described the impact of digital media and social media on individuals behaviour.
Researches has established the fact that the users who are more influenced by the digital
media and social media also suffers from depression and isolation. Studies of (Kim et al.,
2014) has proven that people on Facebook and Instagram are influenced by others post,
thinking that they are not that much capable to afford this life style, or sometimes in order to
cop-up with the others they post fake contents. It has been observed that there are people who
uses social media frequently most of them tries to isolate themselves from the real world
assuming that they are not enough capable for this dynamically changing world. Thus, this
causes a significant distraction from their personal life as this causes a dissatisfaction towards
their own life style and family.
The above two resources are very much relevant to this study as they has described
how the impact of social media has influenced the usage of language and how digital media
and social media has affected the user’s personal life. The above two resource study has
complemented the main topic by providing it a proper justification.
Above sources are credible as these two sources has justified answers and the writer
of these two sites are well known. These investigations has done based on most current
situation thus, these are most accurate resources. As these sources are not promoted by any

5Impact of digital media
particular organization these sites are specifically unbiased which has provided the proper
information to this investigation.
While performing the research based on the information provided in class and video
notes, it was not enough to justify the research results. Thus the additional resource analysis
has took place in order to justify the research. While analysing the additional resources which
were not present in the class notes it has been observed that there are few more areas present
which are distracted by the digital and social media. According to the above studies it has
been discussed that how social media has influenced the usage of English for the users who
are more addicted with Fackbook and instagram chatting. According to the second study it
has been observed that how individuals are affected by others life styles which they post on
Facebook, twitter and instagram. After all of the above analysis it can be concluded that
several areas of individual’s life, organization aspects are getting influenced by the excessive
use of social media, and this impact is causing significant distraction from their daily
activities and reducing the work efficiency.

6Impact of digital media
Reference
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Hajli, M. N. (2014). A study of the impact of social media on consumers. International
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Kim, E., Sung, Y., & Kang, H. (2014). Brand followers’ retweeting behavior on Twitter:
How brand relationships influence brand electronic word-of-mouth. Computers in
Human Behavior, 37, 18-25.
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