EFFECT OF SOCIAL MEDIA (PARTICULARLY TERTIARY INSTITUTION)

INTRODUCTION

The growth of social media over past few years has changed the ways in which the internet is experienced by most end users. Social media is built on the idea of how people know and interact with each other. 

It gives people the power to share, making the world more open and connected with each other. Social networking has a vital influence on our live as it helps a lot in every field of life such as political field, economic field and educational field.

People watch billion of video clip son YouTube daily. Every hour, users upload video content. Every day, more than 90 percent of college students visit a social networking site. People have woven these networks into their daily routines, using Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, online gaming environments, and other tools.

Using of social media is not limited only to professionals or elders but also it is been widely used in educational sectors by the students. There are people who can’t even write their own name and they are only able to recognize him and people by their pictures have full access to internet and constantly check their Smartphone’s for status updates.

Students usually used social site for many reason such as for study purpose, for entertainment purpose as social media provides any data you want very easily and quickly within a fraction of seconds. Usage of social media depends upon person to person as it has good as well as negative impact on the society i.e. on the students. Social Media had become a major distraction to students, causing the overall performance of students to decline, especially the ones who tend to check their Facebook and twitter while studying.

They are extremely busy in accessing number of sites other than educational site for long hours which create a very negative impact on their mind as well as creates ample of health issues and also creating slit in the family. Students, who attempt to multi-task, checking social media sites while studying, show reduced academic performance. Their ability to concentrate on the task at hand is significantly reduced by the distractions that are brought about by YouTube, Facebook or Twitter.

With the help of this paper we are trying to explain the positive and negative impact of using social media on the students.

SOCIAL MEDIA

“Social networks have become thoroughly rooted in modern culture. People have woven these networks into their daily routines, using Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, online gaming environments, and other tools. Social networking makes kids more peer-based. Young people are motivated to learn from their peers online. They interact and receive feedback from one another. They are motivated to learn more from each other than from adults. Teachers and adults are no longer the only sources of knowledge. It makes kids more networked than ever. It is easier for kids to make friends with people all over the world, most of whom they will Social media applications therefore allow users to converse and interact with each other; to create, edit and share new forms of textual, visual and audio content. Social media applications are seen to be open rather than closed, bottom up rather than top-down.

LEARNING WITH SOCIAL MEDIA

It’s no secret that most students and teachers have Smartphone’s and have used social media in education. In fact, there are apps and web tools that offer social media in an educational context.
With faculty using a variety of software tools and free web applications to enhance learning, communication, and engagement, the use of social media is on the rise in higher education classrooms. Compared to traditional learning method that provide few opportunities for learners to develop and maintain their own learning activities, learning platforms based on social media place the control of learning into the hands of learners themselves.

A growing number of research efforts have been made to support teaching and learning using a variety of social media tools. Social networking site for college students are been developed aiming at enhancing both collaborative study and social interaction. The research tells that making social media tools a part of traditional learning is attractive to students and can motivate their participation in the learning process.

E-Learning, the social network sites handled the big problem by providing information to the educators in the recent period. However, Social networks have helped to resolve some of these problems, by adding interactive side with a student, and make the participation of the students in the educational process which leads to an increase to attract them toward e-learning and to clarify the reason behind the attraction educated about social network sites.

HOW SOCIAL MEDIA AFFECTS THE STUDENTS

Social media not only helps to acquire knowledge but also establishing enduring relationships with real people, connecting with fellow dorm residents through Facebook, Twitter and various social sites can help a student overcome the kind of isolation that otherwise might lead her to leave school. 

A Twitter account can provide a shy student with information about events that facilitates face-to-face encounters with other students. Such personal interactions are vital to creating and sustaining a sense of belonging. Using technology to accommodate students‟ different learning styles is not novel. 

The strength of social media applications is that they offer an assortment of tools that learners can mix and match to best suit their individual learning styles and increase their academic success.

The social networking sites focus heavily on building online communities with common interests or activities. Social networking sites also can help students develop leadership skills, from low-level planning and organizing to activities that promote social change and democratic engagement.

Social media tools and networking sites encourage students to engage with each other and to express and share their creativity. Such personal interactions are vital to creating and sustaining a sense of belonging. As there are positive effects of social media there are some negative effects also.

The experts have already made it cleared that social media negatively impact learning. Studies found that middle school, high school and college students who check social media networks at least once during a 15-minute study period achieved lower grades. There are even some teens that are addicted to maintain more than one account on social media networks in some cases when boys sent requests to girls and they do not accept their requests they try to make fake accounts using feminine names and display pictures and try to add others.

CHALLENGES FACED BY THE USE OF SOCIAL MEDIA

There are many Challenges which are being faced by the use of social networking site they are as follows: -

1. Privacy
2. Health Issues
3. Real Friendship
4. Other Challenges

PRIVACY

Many of the students are engross with social networking sites like Facebook, Twitter and many more, with help of which they come in contact with many other people whom they never had met before, seen before or even had talked before. They share their very personal and private information which many times may be used for wrong deeds also. Although a lot of the information individuals’ supply on social-networking sites is elective, users are progressively more comfortable with displaying a great deal of personal information online.

Students and many others start believing very easily on strangers and share their private talks which may be misused. This is very challenging task which is being faced by Social Media. So, the privacy is one of the obstacles that have faced the use of social networking in education.

HEALTH ISSUES

Due to the use of social networking sites for long hours create multiple of health issues. Because of continuous accessing of networking site may create an eyesight problem, back pain because of sitting in same position for long hours and many more.

REAL FRIENDSHIP

Through social networking, person has a lot of friend but the quality and integrity of these friendships is not always true. On the other hand, data on these social-networking sites for a person is not always true and reliable, and they do not verify personal details (age, location, etc.) of their members. While sites provide an opportunity for individuals to present a positive and accurate self-image. So, having many friends through social networking sites is likely to be more harmful than good. This will affect the use of social networking in education

OTHER CHALLENGES

Some of our teens join social media not to post their pictures but to find friends, with whom they can share their thoughts, and sometimes it goes wrong and they interact bad people and such relation could lead to kidnapping. 

The Facebook related abductions are increasing and we can find too many of such examples where Facebook has helped the kidnappers e.g. A man in Indonesia who posed as a photographer on Facebook was arrested and accused of kidnapping and raping three teenage girls. 

Authorities said he lured them into meeting him with him by promising to make them models, and then locked them in a house. Police found dozens of photos of naked girls on his camera and laptop.

POSITIVE AND NEGATIVE IMPACT OF SOCIAL MEDIA IN EDUCATION POSITIVE IMPACT

Social media did make the world a smaller place, now we have more information, more knowledge, and have better opportunities to use it. Social media improved our ability to absorb information, what would have seemed to be over whelming to someone 20 years ago is normal to us, we have an extreme ease in processing and we are evolving quickly.

Following are the Positive Impact of Social Media on Education: -  Google and education, Google has helped over 20 million student in their education using their tools.  By spending so much time working with new technologies, students develop more familiarity with computers and other electronic devices.

          With the increased focus on technology in education and business, this will help students build skills that will aid them throughout their lives. 

          Talents got discovered faster, students who were good at programming got their name out their easily, student who were good in music, got their videos out and shared leading them to their dreams.

A lot of the students were able to inform public about their issues – using social media which brought awareness and helped solve a lot of problems.

NEGATIVE IMPACT

The prime bad effect of social media is addiction. Constantly checking Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn other social media updates. This addiction could negatively affect other valued activities like concentrating on studies, taking active part in sports, real life communication and ignoring ground realities. 

There are hundreds of thousands of fake accounts on social networks who are boys pretending to be girls to be friends with girls and in most cases this leads to embarrassments and disappointments which finally result in depression. If there is awareness about the risk of social media in our community it will not lead to anything bad but there is always lack of public awareness and as mentioned above that the graph of internet users is getting higher and higher while we are still far behind in the field of education thus public awareness is very difficult in societies with lack of education.  

Following are the Negative impact of Social Media on Education: -

1     The popularity of social media, and the speed at which information is published, has created a lax attitude towards proper spelling and grammar. The reduces a student’s ability to effectively write without relying on a computer’s spell check feature.

       Many students rely on the accessibility of information on social media and the web to provide answers. That means a reduced focus on learning and retaining information.

3     Our ability to retain information has decreased, and the willingness to spend more time researching and looking up good information has reduced, due the fact that we got used to the ease of accessibility to information on social media.

4     Students, who attempt to multi-task, checking social media sites while studying, show reduced academic performance. Their ability to concentrate on the task at hand is significantly reduced by the distractions that are brought about by YouTube, Facebook or Twitter.

5     The more time students spend on social sites, the less time they spend socializing in person. Because of the lack of body signals and other nonverbal cues, like tone and inflection, social networking sites are not an adequate replacement for face-to-face communication. Students who spend a great deal of time on social networking are less able to effectively communicate in person.

CONCLUSION

According to the above study we came to know the various positive and negative impacts of social media on education or students. It is very important to overcome this problem. How can parents alleviate the negative aspects of social media while improving upon the positive results? Moderating their access to social media is one excellent method. 

Most of the negative aspects can be overcome by reducing the amount of time spent on social network sites. 

Paying attention to their academic progress and addressing any issues will go a long way towards keeping the negative aspects of social media from influencing their studies.

Provide ample time for face-to-face social interaction, like having some family leisure time in which you discuss their studies in a relaxed atmosphere or inviting friends and family over for get-together, providing fun, face-to-face social interaction with loved ones. 

All this we help us to reduce the Negative impact of social media on the students which will in turn benefit our young generation.

 REFERENCES

[1] The Use of Social Networking in Education: Challenges and Opportunities Ashraf Jalal Yousef Zaidieh ICT, collage of information and communication technology, IIUM KL, Malaysia

[2] The Positive & Negative Impacts Of Social Media On Our New GenerationBy Khaama Press - Wed Nov 19 2014

[3] Using Social Media for Collaborative Learning in Higher Education: A Case StudyNa Li, Sandy El Helou, Denis Gillet

[4] Social Networking in Undergraduate Education .

[5] Nicole A. Buzzetto-More University Maryland Eastern
Shore, Princess Anne, MD, USA 

[6] How social media is changing education.

[7] Social Media Use in Higher Education: Key Areas to Consider for Educators Julia E. Rodriguez Assistant Professor Information Literacy and Educational Technology Librarian.