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Social Media Usage and The Academic Performance of Filipino Junior High School Students

Fainida eppie dimacangun & junge guillena, volume 4 issue 2, june 2023.

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Social media has become integral to people’s lives; revolutionizing communication and providing opportunities to learn about societal trends and issues. This study aimed to examine the influence of social media on the academic performance of junior high school students in Marawi City, Lanao Del Sur, Philippines during the 2022-2023 academic year. It employed a descriptive-correlational research approach to explore the impact of social media usage on academic socialization, entertainment, and informative aspects and its association with academic performance. The study used simple random sampling to select junior high school students from the target school. The findings indicated that students utilized social media for various purposes, including conducting research, problem-solving, peer interaction, curriculum understanding, and collaborative learning. Participants agreed that social media positively influenced their academic, socialization, entertainment, and informative experiences. However, no significant correlation was found between social media usage and academic performance. As a result, educators encourage the responsible use of social media in students’ learning processes. At the same time, school administrators should support teachers in integrating social media into their instructional approaches and classroom activities.

Keywords: Social Media Usage, Academic Performance, Descriptive- Correlation, Junior High School

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Cite this article:

Dimacangun, F.E. & Guillena, J. (2023). Social Media Usage and The Academic Performance of Filipino Junior High School Students. International Journal of Educational Management and Development Studies, 4 (2), 187-206. https://doi.org/10.53378/352994

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• April 15, 2020
• Posted by: RSIS
• Categories: IJRISS, Social Science

Social Media Filipinos and Key National Issues in the Philippines

International Journal of Research and Innovation in Social Science (IJRISS) | Volume IV, Issue IV, April 2020 | ISSN 2454–6186

Social Media, Filipinos, and Key National Issues in the Philippines: A Macro Analysis

Prof. Mark Gabriel Wagan Aguilar, CTP, CNA, CMC School Director, Abe International Business College-Quezon City, Philippines

Abstract:  The Philippines as the top user of social media worldwide has witnessed Filipinos rely on information posted in social media for knowledge on key national issues. This research clearly explained the root cause why people of the Philippines has become ignorant towards issues but remained highly confident when it comes to giving comments on such through social networking websites. It has been found that Filipinos are likely to give comments and/or feedbacks to issues despite knowing nothing on it, and tend to rely on information posted in social media without checking its validity and the sources’ reliability due to the illusory truth effect caused by the continuous commenting, posting, and sharing of information verified or not.

The results also show that poverty is the reason why a person has limited access to reliable information that affects their perception towards key national issues, thus, regulating social media in countries where poverty rate is high is highly recommended.

Social Media, Filipinos, Social Issues, Poverty, Ignorance

I.INTRODUCTION

The Philippines as a country with a democratic form of government gives its people freedom of speech and expression. It’s more fun in the Philippines; the country’s slogan for Tourism could easily be a justification to what Philippine-Style Democracy is; colorful, occasionally chaotic, and arguably inspiring, Abad (2014). However, the country has yet to prove the real power of democracy, that resides in the possibility of a new collective salvation since it has been analyzed to concentrate on the few and the privileged, that is has been shared discriminately, and has been found incapable of tirelessly challenging frozen assumptions and prevailing worldviews, Untalan (2015).

Democracy in the Philippines is undoubtedly alive with 75-78% voter turnout on the 2019 election out of around 62,000,000 registered voters of the 108,116,615 nation’s population that time. It is further justified by Geronimo (2018) in his article where it was stated that 84% of Filipinos are satisfied with how democracy in the country works.

However, democracy was questioned by Socrates, an Athenian Philosopher stating that democracy should not be for everyone, thus, it is only for those people who are educated. In Book Six of The Republic, Plato, another Athenian Philosopher described Socrates falling into a conversation with a character named Adeimantus; Socrates compared

elections to choosing someone to be in charge of a sea vessel, just anyone or someone who is educated in the rules and demands of seafaring. He pointed that voting in an election is a skill and not a random intuition, and that letting someone to vote without an education is as irresponsible as putting them in charge of a trireme sailing. (Chapter 2, Work: Politics and Government, The Book of Life).

The Philippines on the other hand, has embraced democratic traditions of participation and freedom of choice and expression over the years, Abad (2014), and that democracy aside from the right to vote, is speech freedom having it heavily emphasized in the 1987 Constitution which is the current fundamental principle of the country; “No law shall be passed abridging the freedom of speech, of expression, or of the press, or the right of the people to peaceably to assemble and petition the government for redress of grievances”. (Article III, Section 4, Constitution of the Republic of the Philippines, 1987).

Facebook, a social networking website, with 2.2 billion facebook users worldwide which Filipinos are named as the top user with an average of 10 hours a day usage, technically has given another platform for people to exercise freedom of speech. According to Ohme (2018) in his article, facebook has now become a vital part of democracy where daily news is being shared and political discussions are conducted among others. This gives people an opportunity to also discuss other matters such as key national issues.

This study guided by the Think before you Speak (Is it True, Helpful, Inspiring, Necessary, and Kind) principle by Alan Redpath, with the author’s own interpretation; Know before your Click, Ipsos MORI’s The Perils of Perception 2017, and a number of published researches, macro analyzed the knowledge of Filipinos towards Key National Issues and details behind the confidence despite lack of awareness on issues, leading to a conclusion that the platform-social media where they are able to speak freely should be regulated once and for all.

II. METHODS

A qualitative research approach was used to analyze data gathered for this study. The results in Ipsos MORI’s The Perils of Perception 2017, relevant published researches, and news articles were used as sources of data. Data from these resources were collated and macro analyzed with heavy emphasis on the knowledge of Filipinos towards key national issues, and how and why they respond with full of confidence even they know nothing about it.

III. DISCUSSION

Ipsos Mori’s The Perils of Perception 2017 survey showed how wrong the online public across the globe is about their country’s key national issues, not limited to crimes and health. The Philippines ranked third as the most ignorant with South Africa and Brazil in the first and second spots respectively. The result of the study also showed that Filipinos despite being one of the most ignorant are still among the most confident with their answers, together with Indians and Peruvians. This clearly shows that Filipinos are likely to give comments and feedbacks on issues even they know nothing about it or they have not known the facts behind it.

The Philippines as the world knows is historically a third world country but now is a developing one. Based on World Population Review, an independent organization based in California, USA and source of the world’s demographic data, the Philippines’ Gross Domestic Product is low while the infant mortality rate is high, leaving many of its citizens very limited access to health care and higher education. The Philippines is in fact at rank 28 in the list of poorest countries published by Focus Economics, www.focus-economics.com.

According to Child Fund International, a non-profit organization based in Virginia, poverty and education is inextricably linked with each other. In the research conducted by DeNavas-Walt and Proctor (2014) on Income and Poverty in the United States of America. It was found out that people who had lower educational attainment particularly those who had no high school diploma comprise a greater share of the population in poverty. The root cause of poverty is lack of education, Hickman (2015), and like a tree, poverty has many roots, but among many causes of global poverty, one factor still stands out; Education, Geovetti (2019).

In the Philippines, most of those living in poverty have failed to obtain a diploma. While lack of education makes someone lacks confidence in showing up for work and apply by himself, it leaves him unemployed, Hickman (2015), making him incapable of acquiring means that will give him access to information, such as cellphone, tablet, internet, television, and radio among others. Though an android cellphone in the Philippines is quite affordable, access to information is still limited since people without internet can only access social media for free without the provision of all information particularly photos and link sources, thus, creating a wrong perception towards national issues posted, making them ignorant on what really is happening, but still with the freedom to comment, react, and share such post.

The Illusory truth effect that was first identified by Hasher, Goldstein, and Toppino on 1977 in their research on referential validity, is the tendency of people to believe false information to be correct after repeatedly exposed, is the current event in social media as Filipinos continuously copy, paste, and share information validated or not.

Sherman (2014) in his article published in Inc.com cited Dunning’s statement that in his several studies, it was confirmed that people who don’t know much about a given set of skills tend to grossly overestimate their prowess and performance. While the Philippines is a third world country with almost a quarter or about 18 million of the population living in poverty in 2018, who has no formal education and has only limited access to information, this perfectly reflects on the way Filipinos react on key national issues posted in social media; full of confidence.

Manstead (2018), identified the lower class to less likely define themselves in terms of their socioeconomic status and are more likely to have interdependent self-concepts, that they are also inclined to explain social events in situational terms, which as a result is having a lower sense of personal control; this in addition perfectly reflects the way Filipinos react on key national issues posted in social media; based on their feelings and not on facts, react positively on information that is pleasing to their eyes and react negatively on those that are not.

To give a concrete example; in a poll conducted by Pinoy Ekspres, a public page in facebook with around 5,100 followers. The administrators asked people to give grades to their Mayors based on their performance against Corona Virus 2019 Outbreak in the Philippines. Majority were not satisfied resulting to 40% of them giving their Mayor a score of 1, which is the lowest grade that can be given. Most messages to the Mayors were negative; some even asked their Mayors to step down due to his/her allegedly poor performance. However, in the question regarding their knowledge towards the current state of their city/ municipality amidst COVID19 Outbreak, 18% which is 3rd to the highest, said that they have no idea. This has technically proved that Filipinos are indeed more likely to speak and judge without having enough knowledge on an issue.

This data undeniably explain also the increase of cybercrime cases in the country, which according to the Philippine National Police Anti-Cybercrime Group, had increased by nearly 80% or to 4,103 on 2018 from the 2,284 cases reported on 2017.

IV. CONCLUSION

This matrix is hereby conceptualized based on the results of this study.

Figure 1: Matrix showing the relationship among poverty, social media, and perception of people; The Author’s own interpretation based on what has been analyzed in this study.

Figure 1 explains how the different situations affect the perception of people towards information posted in social media. In a third world country, people has limited access to education, which leads to people having low confidence and incompetence towards doing work or performing a job. and this will automatically put them in an unemployed status. Unemployment means no source of income which will definitely result to poverty.

People living in poverty do not have sufficient budget to purchase things that are not considered necessities, some of them do not have budget at all, and this will result to limited access to information which will eventually make people ignorant. However, having limited access to information would also make people base what is factual on whatever information they could access to, that they would share to others believing that the information they have gotten is legitimate. People who have received the information from others would also believe on it due to the illusory truth effect it has brought to their mind. These clearly explain why they are confident in giving comments, feedbacks, and reaction towards key national issues.

Moreover, Filipinos when they know nothing about a national issue will respond based on what they have only read and on what information is available within their access at a certain moment. Lower social classes won’t bother to do further researches to make sure that what they have read is sufficient since they have limited access to such means. Reason why sources of information should provide clear and sufficient information on their social media posts as much as possible.

In addition, Filipinos tend to believe on information posted in social media without having it checked for truthfulness and the sources for reliability due to the illusory truth effect. It is further concluded that aside from the Philippines, there is indeed a need to regulate the use of social media particularly facebook in other countries where the poverty rate is high. This will avoid the spread of fake news, and probably would contribute in changing the way people respond to issues (Social Media Filipinos and Key National Issues in the Philippines) affecting the economy.

[1]. Manstead, 2018: The Psychology of social class: How socioeconomic status impacts though, feelings, and behaviour. British Journal of Social Psychology/ Volume 57, Issue 2.

[2]. DeNavas-Walt & Proctor, 2014: Income and Poverty in the United States: 2014/ Current Population Reports, P60-252, Census Bureau

[3]. Hasher, Goldstein, &Toppino, 1977: Frequency and the Conference pf referential validity. Journal of Verbal Learning and Verbal Behavior, P107-112

[4]. Ipsos MORI, 2017: The Perils of Perceptions 2017

[5]. Abad, 2014: What the Philippines tells us about democracy. World Economic Forum on East Asia, March 21-23, 2014

[6]. Untalan, 2015: The Real Crisis of Philippine Democracy. Kyoto Review of Southeast Asia/ Issue 18. September 2015

[7]. Hickman, 2015: Lack of education is root cause of poverty.

Rochester Business Journal

[8]. Tupas, 2019: Cybercrimes up by 80% in 2018/ Philippine National Police Anti-Cybercrime Group/ The Philippine Star Global News

[9]. World Population Review: Third World Countries 2020/ United National Development Programme.

[10]. 1987, Article III, Section 4, Constitution of the Republic of the Philippines

[11]. Geronimo, 2018: Social Weather Stations Survey on September 2018; 84% of Filipinos satisfied with how democracy works

[12]. FocusEconomics S.L.U., 2018: The Poorest Countries in the World

[13]. Chapter 2. Works: Politics and Government, The Book of Life.

The School of Life

[14]. Ohme, 2018: Facebook is now a vital part of our democracy. The Conversation UK

[15]. ChildFund International.Org; Poverty and Education

[16]. Giovetti, 2019: How does education affect poverty? It can help it. / ConcernUSA.Org

[17]. Sherman, 2014: Finally: Science explains why we’re all more ignorant than we think. / Inc.com

How the brain is flexible enough for a complex world (without being thrown into chaos)

Many neurons exhibit “mixed selectivity,” meaning they can integrate multiple inputs and participate in multiple computations. Mechanisms such as oscillations and neuromodulators recruit their participation and tune them to focus on the relevant information.

Every day our brains strive to optimize a trade-off: With lots of things happening around us even as we also harbor many internal drives and memories, somehow our thoughts must be flexible yet focused enough to guide everything we have to do. In a new paper in Neuron, a team of neuroscientists describes how the brain achieves the cognitive capacity to incorporate all the information that’s relevant without becoming overwhelmed by what’s not.

The authors argue that the flexibility arises from a key property observed in many neurons: “mixed selectivity.” While many neuroscientists used to think each cell had just one dedicated function, more recent evidence has shown that many neurons can instead participate in a variety of computational ensembles, each working in parallel. In other words, when a rabbit considers nibbling on some lettuce in a garden, a single neuron might be involved in not only assessing how hungry it feels but also whether it can hear a hawk overhead or smell a coyote in the trees and how far away the lettuce is.

The brain does not multitask, said paper co-author Earl K. Miller , Picower Professor in The Picower Institute for Learning and Memory at MIT and a pioneer of the mixed selectivity idea, but many cells do have the capacity to be roped into multiple computational efforts (essentially “thoughts”). In the new paper the authors describe specific mechanisms the brain employs to recruit neurons into different computations and to ensure that those neurons represent the right number of dimensions of a complex task.

“These neurons wear multiple hats,” Miller said. “With mixed selectivity you can have a representational space that’s as complex as it needs to be and no more complex. That’s what flexible cognition is all about.”

Co-author Kay Tye , Professor at The Salk Institute and the University of California at San Diego, said mixed selectivity among neurons particularly in the medial prefrontal cortex is key to enabling many mental abilities.

"The mPFC is like a hum of whispers that represents so much information through highly flexible and dynamic ensembles," Tye said. “Mixed selectivity is the property that endows us with our flexibility, cognitive capacity, and ability to be creative.  It is the secret to maximizing computational power which is essentially the underpinnings of intelligence."

Origins of an idea

The idea of mixed selectivity germinated in 2000 when Miller and colleague John Duncan defended a surprising result from a study of cognition in Miller’s lab. As animals sorted images into categories, about 30 percent of the neurons in the prefrontal cortex of the brain seemed to be involved. Skeptics who believed that every neuron had a dedicated function scoffed that the brain would devote so many cells to just one task. Miller and Duncan’s answer was that perhaps cells had the flexibility to be involved in many computations. The ability to serve on one cerebral task force, as it were, did not preclude them from being able to serve many others.

But what benefit does mixed selectivity convey? In 2013 Miller teamed up with two co-authors of the new paper, Mattia Rigotti of IBM Research and Stefano Fusi of Columbia University, to show how mixed selectivity endows the brain with powerful computational flexibility. Essentially, an ensemble of neurons with mixed selectivity can accommodate many more dimensions of information about a task than a population of neurons with invariant functions.

“Since our original work, we've made progress understanding the theory of mixed selectivity through the lens of classical machine learning ideas,” Rigotti said. “On the other hand, questions dear to experimentalists about the mechanisms implementing it at a cellular level had been comparatively under-explored. This collaboration and this new paper set out to fill that gap.”

In the new paper the authors imagine a mouse who is considering whether to eat a berry. It might smell delicious (that’s one dimension). It might be poisonous (that’s another). Yet another dimension or two of the problem could come in the form of a social cue. If the mouse smells the berry scent on a fellow mouse’s breath, then the berry is probably OK to eat (depending on the apparent health of the fellow mouse). A neural ensemble with mixed selectivity would be able to integrate all that.

Recruiting neurons

While mixed selectivity has the backing of copious evidence—it has been observed across the cortex and in other brain areas such as the hippocampus and amygdala—there are still open questions. For instance, how are neurons recruited to tasks and how do neurons that are so “open-minded” remain tuned only to what really matters to the mission?

In the new study, the researchers who also include Marcus Benna of UC San Diego and Felix Taschbach of The Salk Institute, define the forms of mixed selectivity that researchers have observed, and argue that when oscillations (also known as “brain waves”) and neuromodulators (chemicals such as serotonin or dopamine that influence neural function) recruit neurons into computational ensembles, they also help them “gate” what’s important for that purpose.

To be sure, some neurons are dedicated to a specific input, but the authors note they are an exception rather than the rule. The authors say these cells have “pure selectivity.” They only care if the rabbit sees lettuce. Some neurons exhibit “linear mixed selectivity,” which means their response predictably depends on multiple inputs adding up (the rabbit sees lettuce and feels hungry). The neurons that add the most dimensional flexibility are the “nonlinear mixed selectivity” ones that can account for multiple independent variables without necessarily summing them. Instead they might weigh a whole set of independent conditions (e.g. there’s lettuce, I’m hungry, I hear no hawks, I smell no coyotes, but the lettuce is far and I see a pretty sturdy fence).

So what brings neurons into the fold to focus on the salient factors, however many there are? One mechanism is oscillations, which are produced in the brain when many neurons all maintain their electrical activity at the same rhythm. This coordinated activity enables information sharing, essentially tuning them together like a bunch of cars all playing the same radio station (maybe the broadcast is about a hawk circling overhead). Another mechanism the authors highlight is neuromodulators. These are chemicals that upon reaching receptors within cells can influence their activity as well. A burst of acetylcholine, for instance, might similarly attune neurons with the right receptors to certain activity or information (like maybe that feeling of hunger).

“These two mechanisms likely work together to dynamically form functional networks,” the authors write.

Understanding mixed selectivity, they continue, is critical to understanding cognition.

“Mixed selectivity is ubiquitous,” they conclude. “It is present across species and across functions from high-level cognition to ‘automatic’ sensorimotor processes such as object recognition. The widespread presence of mixed selectivity underscores its fundamental role in providing the brain with the scalable processing power needed for complex thought and action.”

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Why menstrual health research and medical practice in sport needs to move from ethnic exclusions to cultural safety

Keywords: Menstruation, Female Athletes, Sports, Indigenous Methodology

Sports and medical professionals are increasingly focused on menstrual health and how it affects sporting performances, health, and well-being. However, with few exceptions, much of this research has focused on athletes of Caucasian and European descent, with findings generalized to athletes from distinct cultural and ethnic backgrounds. Very little research has considered how athletes’ ethnicity may shape their experiences of menstrual health in sports, or how medical providers consider ethnicity in supporting and treating athletes.

A scoping review of 1089 articles recently published in the British Journal of Sports Medicine identifies the significant gap in cultural considerations in menstrual health in sports research (1). The careful consideration of the inclusion of ethnicity in future research is important to help coaches, medical personnel, and support staff approach this topic effectively without causing or exacerbating harm. 

Why is this study important?

This study is important because it acknowledges how women’s cultural and ethnic identities significantly influence women’s experiences of menstruation in sports. It also identifies the need for new approaches that prioritize cultural safety in research and medical practice.

How did the study go about this?

For this study, we adapted criteria from Indigenous health researchers to produce an 11-item criteria to assess the quality of sports medicine research including participants of non-white ethnicities. An electronic database search identified 1089 articles related to menstrual health and sports, with 55 meeting the inclusion criteria. We then used the Inclusion of Participant Ethnicity Quality Assessment Criteria to review nine articles, with each given a rating of ‘poor’ (below 7 points), ‘fair’ (8-15 points), or ‘good’ (16-22 points) in how ethnicity was considered throughout the research design, findings and conclusion.

What did the study find?

This scoping review examined how ethnicity is considered in sports science and medicine research on menstrual health in sports and identifies important gaps. The study found that 81% of research articles on menstrual health in sports do not consider athlete ethnicity.

Of the nine studies that met the final inclusion criteria, five studies were assessed as poor (0 – 7 points), three as fair (8 – 15 points), and two as good (16 – 22 points) in how ethnicity was considered in the research design, findings and conclusion.

While some studies included more culturally diverse samples, very rarely were the menstruation-related experiences of Black, Indigenous, or ethnic minority women the focus of nuanced consideration. The invisibility of data or skewed results on ethnicity could cause harm to sportswomen due to the results being generalized, the cultural differences being denied, and medical care not respecting women’s culturally specific knowledge of health, well-being, and menstruation.

What are the key take-home points?

This scoping review identifies the need for research and medical professionals working in menstrual health to move towards a cultural safety perspective. Future research should not simply ‘add’ more cultural diversity into samples and then ‘stir’, rather researchers need to rethink their methodologies in ways that genuinely respect and value the cultural diversity of experiences of menstrual health. Research on menstrual health in sports needs to work towards cultural safety and cultural responsiveness. It is only then that menstrual health in sports research can move towards ‘excellence’ in terms of how athletes’ cultural and ethnic backgrounds are considered in the research designs.

With greater knowledge and consideration of how women from different cultures and ethnicities understand menstruation, medical and sports professionals can better support the menstrual health and well-being of their athletes, which has the potential to positively impact their training and performance, as well as overall feelings of belonging and support in their sporting environments.

References:

• Gibbons AE, Pedlar C, Varner Hemi K, et alMoving from ethnic exclusions to cultural safety: how is athlete ethnicity discussed in research on menstrual health in sports? A scoping review British Journal of Sports Medicine 2024;58:435-443.

Author and Affiliations:

Agatha Elizabeth Gibbons, Charles Pedlar, Keakaokawai Varner Hemi, Georgie Bruinvels, Bruce Hamilton, and Holly Thorpe

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Religious Worship Attendance in America: Evidence from Cellphone Data

Religious worship is integral to the lives of millions of Americans, and has increasingly been shown to be an important driver of important economic outcomes . To date, most studies on religion have relied on surveys where respondents self-report their worship, potentially limiting the reliability of results. In this paper, the author uses anonymized location data from smartphones to provide a descriptive analysis of religious worship attendance in the United States.  

The author uses geolocation data from Veraset, a company that provides de-identified geospatial data for millions of smartphones in the United States. He narrows his sample to the roughly 2.1 million cellphones that generate consistent location data over a one-year period between April 2019 and February 2020. The author shows that his sample is reasonably representative of the broader population and can therefore be used to make estimates about religious behavior for the full country. He discovers the following concerning religious worship attendance in the United States:

• Seventy-three percent of people step into a religious place of worship at least once during the year on the primary day of worship (e.g. Sundays for most Christian churches). However, only 5% of Americans attend services “weekly,” far fewer than the roughly 22% who report they do so in surveys.  
• The number of occasional versus frequent attenders varies substantially by religion. Members of some religions, such as Latter-day Saints and Jehovah’s Witnesses, have a relatively high fraction of members who are weekly attenders, while members of other religions, such as Catholics and Jews, have a relatively low fraction of members who are weekly attenders.  
• Approximately 45 million Americans attend worship services in a typical week. There is limited week-to-week variation/seasonality in attendance, with holidays being the major exceptions. Easter Sunday and Christmas, for example, have nearly 50% greater religious attendance than a typical week.
• Start times and duration of attendance differ meaningfully across religious traditions. There is extreme consistency/uniformity in some religions both in terms of start times and durations (Muslims, Latter-day Saints, and Jehovah’s Witnesses) while other religions are much less uniform (Buddhists and Hindus).  
• Religious individuals have very similar income to non-religious individuals ($79k versus $80k). However, individuals that attend weekly have slightly lower incomes ($74k) than less-frequent attenders ($78k) and never attenders ($80k).  
• Cold temperatures and precipitation on the day of service lead to less attendance.  
• The intensity of religious observance correlates with a host of other activities. For example, relative to non-attenders and infrequent attenders, frequent religious attenders are less likely to go to strip clubs, liquor stores, and casinos.  

This research paints a newly detailed picture of religious worship attendance in the United States. Even though the author finds that the frequency of religious worship visits is lower than claimed in surveys, he still shows that approximately 45 million Americans spend more than an hour each week attending religious worship, underscoring the important role of religion in American life. By releasing new granular measures of religious attendance, the author hopes to support future research on some of the most important questions related to religion, such as what leads to increased or decreased religiosity and how religiosity impacts peoples’ attitudes and behaviors.

More on this topic

When Product Markets Become Collective Traps: The Case of Social Media