Introduction
Online social networking has become very popular in recent years. The number of social networking sites has increased tremendously and more and more people have started using these sites to interact with their peers, friends and family. Most of the users of these social networking sites are young people who are aged below the age of 29. In fact, research by the Pew Internet and American Life Project has found that about 83% of people aged between 18 and 29 years are frequent users of social media while the rate of social media users in the 12 to 18 age bracket is 73% (McDonough et al, 2013). Since most of the people in the two age brackets are students, it is important to gauge the impact of social media on these students. There are obviously bound to be positive and negative effects and aim of this essay is to show that the positive effects of social use among students outweigh the negative effects.
It is hard to imagine how life would be without the use of social media in the modern setting. Most people seem to be of the opinion that their lives would essentially be meaningless if they did have social media. It is therefore very easy to understand why individuals, especially students would become addicted to social media. Unfortunately, the rampant use of social media among students has dire consequences. Research conducted on 483 freshmen students at one North East university seems to suggest that excessive use of social media had a direct effect on their education outcomes including GPA, academic behaviors confidence and problems (Nauert, 2013). It was found that the participants of this study actually spent more than 12 hours daily engaging in some sort of social media use and as a result, they exhibited less academic behaviour including incompletion of homework, skipping of classes and negative overall class performance. These results are complementary to those of another research conducted by Wang et al (2011) that also found out that a large number of college going students spent a large chunk of their days engaged in some sort of social media use and this negatively affected their education performance.
With these blinding statistics, it would be understandable for one to conclude that social media is one hundred percent harmful to students because of its negative effects. However, when new aspects are brought into light, it emerges that this notion is largely inaccurate. The positive effects of social media outweigh the negative effects.
According to McDonough et al (2013), social media together with other internet based tools can be used in an academic or education setting to promote or enhance student engagement as well as facilitate better learning. Due to the fact that student engagement essentially represents the effort and the time that students invest or dedicate on collaborative education activities, it often associated with achievement of affirmative student education outcomes, for instance critical thinking as well as individual student development. When looked from this angle it becomes clear that there is a positive side to social media use among students that may actually outweigh the negative side.
There is a general agreement among researchers that knowledge does not only exclusively exist in individuals’ minds but it can also be found in the interactions and the discourse between individuals. These interactions particularly between students support active participation and this is indeed one of the most essential elements of student learning. Meaningful interactions between students via social media help the students to develop critical skills as well as share the knowledge with others. In simple terms, social media serves as an effective tool for the facilitation of development of student learning communities by encouraging communication and collaboration. In addition, social media interactions between students reinforced the attainment of positive learning outcomes.
Social media therefore provides educators with a tool that they can use to develop critical thinking and creativity in their students by encouraging the students to utilize the social media not just as an entertainment or a relaxation tool but also as a way of exploring classroom material.
Social media also provides students with a platform where they can create creative and authentic products through media tools such as YouTube, podcasts and blogs. By doing this, students are essentially able to move beyond memorization of class content and develop products that embody their own voices. Additionally, social media enables students to research or explore content material so as to build up new knowledge (McDonough et al, 2013).
Conclusion
Works Cited
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