Does your child study in front of the computer? Or do they have one eye on the textbook and the other eye on their mobile phone, attending to its every need – embodied in every tweet, every ping of that WhatsApp group, every Facebook notification, every Snapchat and every like on Instagram. (And these are just the platforms this archaic Country Living-er is familiar with.)

This pressing desire to be constantly connected eats up hours and hours of time, so is it fair to say social media is doing serious damage to exam results?

“Social media is the silent killer of exam grades,” says Orla Ní Shuilleabháín, study skills expert at the Institute of Education on Leeson Street.

“It’s an ever-present distraction during study. Students find they spend a lot of time on social media and they can’t control it. Our successful students would limit the time they spend on social media – if accessing it at all. Students can be on social media 24 hours a day at their desk. It is not as obvious as television, so people around them [AKA parents] are not aware that they are on it.”

Negative impact

Mark Smyth, clinical psychologist and member of the Psychological Society of Ireland says that “without a doubt” social media is having a negative impact on studying and grades.

“Its all-encompassing nature, the frequency of the notifications, the high level of concern that young people have about missing out on what’s been said on social media, and the fact that most teens are on at least three different social media platforms, mean it takes up a significant amount of time in young people’s lives,” says Mark.

“However, it’s an over-simplification to say it’s the silent killer of grades in Ireland. It would also be contrary to reports of increasing numbers of students taking higher grades.

“This is not to say, however, there is no negative impact of increased social media use on young people. Increasing numbers of young people are presenting to child and adolescent mental health services (CAMHS) with mood, anxiety and concentration-based difficulties. Following assessment, it transpires that excessive social media use is a common factor.”

Excessive use

Excessive is exactly the term to describe young people’s relationship with social media. Studyclix.ie, an interactive study website which is used by 36,567 secondary school student users and 16,736 secondary school teachers, conducted an annual sentiment index this year, which found 55% of students surveyed feel they are addicted to their phones, with girls seeming to have a harder time switching off as 68% admit to an attachment, compared with 55% of the boys.

Wexford (72%) and Kilkenny (74%) had the highest percentage of students agreeing they were addicted to their phones. Nationwide, 49% of students said they have checked their phone secretly in the past week when their teacher wasn’t looking.

Lee Kelly, who holds a master’s degree in cyber-psychology, notes that students may be spending more time than they realise on these platforms.

“With Snapchat you can take an image very quickly. Snapchat is a having-the-craic network. It’s banter – there’s no longevity to the contact. You can reply so quickly that it doesn’t equate to using a lot of time in the user’s mind because it’s so quick. But it all adds up. It’s more of a constant distraction than another network,” says Lee.

The same goes for the dating app Tinder.

“Tinder is a quick hit of interaction. There’s very little input in terms of what you’re doing. You’re a bit bored and you take it out and flick through it, but if you get a match you’re messaging.”

Distracting and time-consuming as social media may be, however, distraction and procrastination have been around for ever.

“They’re not new behaviours – it’s just allowing people to carry out behaviours in a new way,” says Lee Kelly.

Mark Smyth notes that before social media, television was the culprit and before that it was music.

“However, social media is more potentially distracting due to how immersive and interactive it is. With television or music, you are a passive participant, but with social media there is instantaneous feedback to pull us back in, which is more difficult to resist than other forms of media.”

tired at school

Lack of sleep is another side effect. Mark notes that many students can’t concentrate in school because they are up all night.

“They are shattered in the morning. They are too tired to go to school.”

Just 27% of first years fall asleep before 10pm, according to Studyclix’s survey, with 19% of sixth years falling asleep between midnight and 2am.

Social media is aiding and abetting insomnia.

“Teenagers will then say: ‘It takes me ages to get to sleep,’ but this is because their brain is in sixth gear,” says Mark.

“People need to do low-stimulation activities before bed that get them into a restful space. When you’re on all these social networks, it’s like the equivalent of going into a room and watching 15 different channels on 15 different televisions. Your brain is wired thinking about all these conversations. It’s like a disco in your brain.”

Social withdrawal is another problem.

“People are trying to say things perfectly. But there’s no back, edit or delete button in the real world,” says Mark Smyth. “Teenagers are not picking up basic conversational skills, such as eye contact, tone of voice and turn-taking. Lots of kids are getting anxious.”

Mark adds he’s met some young people whose entire lives are in their bedrooms, yet he isn’t necessarily against having a games console, television or laptop in the bedroom.

“Teenagers need space or time away. But you must know when too much is too much. Parents have an expectation that children will know when to stop. I believe that sometimes we expect too much of our young people and that they need assistance to learn how to self-regulate. I would advocate that in each family home there are clear boundaries and expectations around study time and it is expected that social media devices would be switched off at these times.”

Advice for parents

Given that social media is not going anywhere, what is the best approach to take?

“It’s increasing in popularity and becoming more and more of the core identity of young people. Once we accept this, then the next step is to understand it and to work with it, rather than be negatively judgemental of it. The more we look down on or ban things that are important to young people, the more attractive it becomes and the bigger the gap that emerges between us and them. Young people’s online identities are just as important and relevant to them as their offline identities,” says Mark.

He wouldn’t advocate deleting social media profiles coming up to exams and neither would Studyclix co-founder and secondary school science, geography and maths teacher Luke Saunders, who notes the importance of a wide-ranging support network.

“It lessens the chances of them feeling isolated and overwhelmed by exam pressure,” says Luke.

Mobile internet

Lee Kelly notes that more than 50% of internet data usage is mobile.

“Everything is being pushed towards your phone. Minimise distractions. Turn off notifications on apps. You could even turn off the data connection on your phone and turn off wi-fi while studying. If you’re going to use Facebook on a desktop, you can install apps to time it. On a Chrome browser, you can set an amount of time or you can block access.”

He says a lot of the time parents are not familiar with social networks and if they use Facebook themselves, they have more of an idea of how to control it.

Greg Canty, a partner in Fuzion Communications, who conducts social media training agrees.

“They don’t understand how these things work. They should set up their own Facebook profile. It’s a new way of communicating – they need to get used to it. Social media is an absolutely essential life skill. It’s a really, really good communication platform,” Greg says.

He has ideas on how social media can be incorporated into school work.

“Students should put their essays on blogs. If they’re in an economics class, they should be following the likes of David McWilliams on Twitter. I would be all for embracing it, but with that comes responsibility and teaching. Teach them about privacy settings and show them responsible interaction. You’re sticking your head in the sand if you think this stuff is going to go away.”