Investigating How Technology May Negatively Affect the Academic Performance and Sleep Quality of Students

Abstract

Students have been utilizing IT services such as social media, video games, and streaming services for entertainment, communication and even for coping mechanism to stress and academic workload. However, improper and heavy usage of these services can lead to bad habits and practices that can negatively affect their physical well-being particularly the quality of sleep and academic performance. It is important to investigate how to protect the students from the negative impact of excessive use of technology. This study aims to investigate how high usage rate of IT services such as social media, video games, and streaming services, can negatively affect the academic performance and sleep quality of high school students. Thirty (30) STEM high school students participated in this study over 3 different periods of academic workload. The results of this study show that IT services have no negative impact on the academic performance of the respondents and even beneficial since they are used as coping mechanism when faced with stress and heavy workload. However, most believe that such services have negative impact on their quality of sleep.