Our world has seen a sharp rise in the use of social media in the past few years. Services like Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, TikTok, and Snapchat are some of the most popular among people around the world. These apps and websites drive the way many people connect with each other and are becoming a larger part of our everyday lives as time goes on.
Social media and students have a strong relationship too. Young students are among those people who constantly look for new followers and ‘likes’ on social media apps. On the other hand, many college students also use social media for collaborating with each other and writing papers. If you would like to write such a paper yourself, you can check out an essay on Social Media to use as a basis for your own research. Reading a free essay on social media is crucial to develop a better understanding of the good and bad of such websites and services, which is a precursor to writing a great essay yourself.
While the popularity of Instagram among young people, or of another app, may seem like it would negatively affect their academic performance, it’s not quite that simple. There are both pros and cons when we talk about social media and students’ academic performance, so let’s take a look at both.
Positive Effects of Social Media on Education
● Diverse Thinking and Interactions
Through the use of social media, students can not only collaborate with each other but also get exposed to diverse interactions. They no longer have contact with just their classmates and teachers but potentially with students from around the world. This allows them to reach many different ideas about a topic that they may be writing papers on, for example.
● Ability to Reach Experts
One of the best ways in which social media boosts academic performance among students is by giving them a chance to reach out to industry professionals and experts. Having the ability to ask a question directly to a person whose work you are following or whose field you are studying in is one of the best things you can do as a student, and social media allows you to do that.
● Improved Collaboration
Working on team projects is a breeze through the use of social media. Many students know that using their college or university’s own online platforms can often be clunky and counterproductive. Using apps that they use on a daily basis like Facebook to make groups and host video calls, etc., makes their lives much easier when they have to collaborate on a project with other students.
Negative Effects of Social Media on Education
● Lower Retention Rates
The use of social media often leads to a lower retention rate and a drop in attention span among young people. There is so much constant noise on such apps that students end up wasting a lot of time just browsing through the profile of their favourite blogger or influencer.
● Weaker Writing Abilities
When students use social media too much, they get accustomed to writing in slang or shorthand. This leads to bad performance in academic writing assignments like research papers and examinations. It also causes problems later in life when they join an office and have to write professional correspondence.
● Reliance on the Internet
When a student has the ability to ask millions of people about the answer to a particular problem, it leads to an overreliance on social media. This, in turn, negatively affects many students’ research skills which ends up hurting them in their professional lives.
Conclusion
As stated before, social media and students have a strong relationship with one another. On the one hand, social media apps are a great way for them to get in touch with each other and work together, but on the other, they can be a big distraction and can cause some serious long-term issues. If you’re wondering how many students use social media, then the answer is ‘a lot’. Those students need to find a balance between the use of social media and their academic performance, as both seem to get more and more intertwined with one another as time goes by.
