![Forty percent of Korean students aged 12 to 19 spend more than three hours a day tweeting, chatting, or playing games. [AP/Ahn Young Joon]](http://www.jstudentboard.com/reporter/wp-content/uploads/2014/11/JSR_Nov01_Smartphone.jpg)
In the past, “media” was just about music on radios, news on paper, and black and white television screens. Before the Internet, there was no SNS and students spent more time out in the sun.
However, students today are locked into their smartphones and laptops trying to communicate with their friends or write statuses about what they bought at the mall the previous night. Students find themselves suffering as they try to stop themselves from logging into sites such as Facebook because they go through dilemmas such as procrastination. As the problem has gotten worse, people around the world have become aware of the issue of SNS addiction among young adults who are supposed to be focused on their studies.
According to Business Korea, 20% of teenagers in South Korea are addicted to their smartphones, which they use to access social media. In a 2012 survey of 1000 United States teens, child advocacy group Common Sense Media found that 25% of respondents use at least two types of social media a day.
Aileen Park, a freshmen attending Jiaotong University in China, told JSR, “I am constantly worried if [I have not checked my Facebook recently]. …I feel outdated in hours. I can’t sit still and study. I have to have my phone or my laptop with me.”
“At the end,” she continued, “I realize I haven’t completed what I was supposed to do even though I had more than enough time to finish it.”
In some instances, SNS may help students communicate with their friends to discuss academics or the problems they face daily. However, Seoul International School junior Kevin Shim told JSR that “those group chats that were originally made for academic purposes can easily turn into chats between groups of bored people who are trying to get away from their work.”
While it may not be SNSs themselves that create the problem, many students are approaching them too frequently. Students complain in many different environments that teachers don’t give much time to complete projects or study for tests. Yet before they whine, they should first think about how much time they spend on websites such as Facebook or Instagram and how these websites influence them.
