The impact of social media content overload on EFL student’s academic capabilities: consequences and solutions

Abstract

Technological advancements have dramatically impacted the educational environment; in this context social media brings many educational benefits, but at the same time presents several challenges. One of these challenges is social media content overload; this, therefore, leads to the investigation on this issue to identify EFL students' opinions about this phenomenon and to know the consequences they experienced and solutions they use to reduce its impact. Data comes from 325 EFL students from Moulay Ismail University in Morocco who successfully completed an online questionnaire. The results from the study indicate that almost all EFL students suffer from social media content overload that exceeds their mental capacities. Also participants added that it is time consuming for them to analyze everything presented on social media. The results showed that EFL students experienced several consequences such as: mental fatigue, low productivity, stress and anxiety etc. These consequences, therefore, negatively impacted their academic achievements. In this regard, participants suggested some applicable strategies to mitigate the impact of content overload for instance: time management strategy, advance planning strategy, one platform use strategy and withdrawal strategy. All in all, the issue of content overload remains everlasting because social media platforms are evolving almost every month thanks to technological advancements and this will make this issue hard to vanish. Therefore, EFL students should accept the reality and take this issue seriously by sticking to strategies that can keep the impact at bay.