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This essay by Fargol Rozati won Second Place in the Hare & Bell 2025 Writing Contest.

Abstract

This study investigates the influence of the social media app, TikTok, on the attention spans of freshman high school students at a public high school in Overland Park, Kansas. The research covers the history and science of the notable social media site, the problem that arising from its use, the effects on its magnified demographic, and a research question that focuses on the app's consequences for high school students, specifically in a classroom setting. An extensive literature review was executed to find sufficient gaps regarding this media platform and its effects. The research performed narrowed down the overall focus of this study to initiate a plan to investigate the missing holes regarding this topic.

The methodology was then carried out, including an experimental, two-sample test design creating a classroom simulation, followed by a questionnaire serving as the research instrument. The population measured for this experiment consisted of a set of freshmen at a local high school who willingly participated in the study, being randomly selected to be present in two different conditions. With the size of the population and research instrument in mind, it was concluded that the most appropriate way of analyzing the final data consisted of calculating the percentages of the overall correct answers between the two groups as well as the correct percentages regarding the placements of questions to determine whether Tiktok was negatively impacting the students measured. After extensive examination, the findings of this study indicated that TikTok did have a greater negative influence on the attention spans of freshman students, affecting the way they absorb information during lecture lessons. This study can be a platform for students, as well as teachers, to become aware of the effects of the popular social media app to monitor its use without impacting their academic performances.

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