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Nowadays the youth are in Information Technology(IT) phenomenon where
everything is just at the tip of their fingers. Internet has become a integral
for the communities. Besides searching for information, students are also
occupied with social networking. The examples of social networking sites are
Facebook, Twitter and Instagram. Social networking have plenty of advantages as
well as the disadvantages for students. The advantages of social networking
among students are flexible time to discuss with friends, make friends with
different background and gain fast information, while the disadvantages of it
are lost focus, waste of time and receive false information.
Since the internet is 24 hours available, there is the flexibility of
time where students can access it whenever they want. Sometimes students would
prefer to start their work at late night and having all sorts of questions or
formula that they do not know. By connecting to their social network, students
can interact with friends and may have discussion about the problems. According
to spotlight.mcfound.org, A small but impressive study of students at Lockhaven University in Pennsylvania found that
those who used Twitter to continue class discussions and complete assignments
were more engaged in their classwork than students who did not, (cited in
clintlalonde.net, 2011).
The next advantage of social
networking is student can make new friends with people who has different background. Academic learning can be
more interesting if there are more point of view about it. A student can make new
friends which are from other culture, religion, race and can ask their opinion
for a certain subject such as a discussion for essay content-cultures. Here
student can have a realistic information about the particular culture, religion
and race. Most of the times, when people search for information through the
internet they always take the unrealistic information because of no information
filtering. Online materials are overflowing and therefore, it is hard for
students to find the accurate answer for their question.
Gaining fast information is also an
advantage from social networking among students. Everything are fast widespread
via Facebook and Twitter. Any news and latest information can be gain from that
site as soon as a person look into it. Students sometimes does not have to
search and do information filtering to have the information that they want.
Students may click on a trusted person social network site to get the related
facts. This is very convenience and avoid wasting much of the student time to
search for academic materials.
Despite all the advantages of social
networking among students, there are a few of social networking disadvantages.
The first flaw of it is looses focus from the real intention of study purpose.
Students have set the mind to log in the Facebook and just discuss or asking
friends about academic problems, but they usually will distray from it when
seeing the feeds beside. There were a survey about students and Facebook.
According to fellow student Sarah,18, most of her peers could multi-task well,
but using sites like Facebook was a question of balance,(cited in Herald Sun, www.heraldsun.com).This proved that social networking can
distract students because of their features or applications. Actually, social
networking will get students addicted to it.
Students interacting with other
student in the social network, can be a waste of time. Communicating by online
let the other person have the freedom to reply whenever he or she wants to.
This leads to the procrastination of time when person A is waiting for a long period
for person B to reply. Students waste most of their time in front of the
computers, just waiting for a simple answer as ‘yes’ or ‘no’. This is
frustrating and will also put the student in a stressful situation. Many things
can be done from the time that has been wasted for waiting too long for a
reply. Their homework may also delayed due to depending too much on friends
instead of searching materials for themselves.
Another disadvantage of social
networking among students is prone to receive false information. People can
post anything they want in Facebook and Twitter. The validity is not confirmed
and even some of the irresponsible individual just create some random
information from the thin air. Students who are immature will probably take the
information without thinking further. The consequences of this problem make the
students using the wrong information in their homeworks.
In a nutshell, it can be concluded
that social networking can bring a positive and negative impact among the
students. It will be an advantage if the students use the social network wisely
and not excessively. Students should aware the priority of their work and must
not be distracted by the useless act such as following vain posts and leaving
behind meaningless comment or reply. It could be a disadvantages if the
students are social networking without a clear goal to achieve.
