Social Media Effects
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Social media is rapidly changing the world, and it is part of everyday life for many university students. Students have become Google-educated and Facebook dependent. They rely on Facebook notifications and Twitters trending topics to communicate with their friends. Social media applications allow users to interact with each other, to create, edit, and share new forms of textual, visual and audio content. The key characteristic of all these social media practices is mass socialization. The growth of social media over the past five years has transformed the ways in which the internet is experienced by most users. Now the internet is no longer a one-way broadcast delivery system where the individual user downloads data, information and other resources produced by a relatively small number of content providers. Instead, the internet is now driven by the activities of its ordinary users–what has been described as many-to-many rather than one-to-many connectivity. The Internet may be a valuable medium for students; however, it is often a hindrance for them because social media decreases their academic performance, negatively effects students socialization, and negatively effects their future employment.
Social media decreases students academic performance. As we know, students who are generation Y are tech savvy. Most of them have laptops, “Iphones”, or smartphones, so it is easy to have twenty four hours of access to the social media sites, which is tempting to students. Often students attempt to multitask by checking social media sites while studying. Their ability to concentrate on the task at hand is reduced by the distractions that are brought by YouTube, Facebook, Wiki, or Twitter. Because of these distractions, students cannot focus on their studies, which negatively effects their grades. According to the study conducted by Harvard University, the grades of those who multitask between Facebook and studying are twenty percent lower than the grades of those who do not multitask (Education Database Online, 2011). Moreover, a study done by the Ohio State University found that college students who use Facebook spend less time studying; consequently, they get lower grades. The study found that non-users spent an average of eleven to fifteen hours studying per week, while those who used Facebook spent one to five hours per week studying. On average, Facebook users had GPAs between 3.0 and 3.5, while non-users had GPAs between 3.5 and 4.0 (The Ohio State University, 2009). It can be concluded that students cannot multitask, and it is a key issue in academic impairment. Therefore, social media leads to the poor academic performance of students because they spend more time surfing online than studying,
Also, social media can make it difficult for university students to find employment once they graduate. Students do not realize the degree to which private information is available online, and they have forgotten that they need to filter the information they post. Social networking sites can damage students chances for employment because, when students look for an internship or a part time job, their Facebook and MySpace profiles are often screened by employers. If those profiles contain inappropriate pictures or statuses, it may cause negative reaction of employers regarding those candidates. According