IMPACTS OF SOCIAL MEDIA ON EDUCATION

We just reached an accumulated 2 billion active social media users worldwide; this means that the effect of social media on our way of life and on our education is inevitable. One of the major factors of our life that got affected is our education, knowing that the majority of the social media users globally, range from the age of 14-29 AKA school years more or less. Though we all might assume that the effect is one sided, but it seems that social media has done as much good as bad to our educational structure. There’s no doubt that students are actively engaged in online communities, but what kind of effects are these sites having and how can parents counteract the bad and bolster the positive?

Some Negative points-

1. Students are having a harder time getting to communicate face to face with people, and are losing their people skills, due to that they are spending more and more time talking from behind a screen.
2. The attention to details, attention to pronunciation and grammar, has declined drastically, due to that most of the communication that happens online is not proper.
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. 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 Face book and twitter while studying.  

Some Positive Points

On the other side

1. Social media did make the world a smaller place, now we have more information, more knowledge, and have better opportunities to use it
2. 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.
3. Social media helped students have a better direction of what they want, now they have ease of reaching to mentors in the same industry and people already working in their dream company, and get a taste of what it is like, which was quite impossible for students 10 years ago.
4. Students got closer to art and design, and are exposed continuously to new ideas, and are given a big chance to feed their creativity.
5. 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.

However, 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. So, too, will providing fun, face-to-face social interaction with our children’s and students.

SOURCE- Someworld.com               

The author of this article Assistant Professor, Pioneer Institute of Professional Studies (Indore)