Facebook good or bad?

Does Facebook have a positive or negative effect on students? This issue is very mixed and inconclusive.Recently, OnlineEducation.net, an online database designed to inform current and prospective students about education opportunities in the U.S., compiled a mound of research data on college students and their use of social media. After analysis,

Key survey findings include:

96 percent of college students use Facebook; Grades of students who checked Facebook while studying were 20% lower than grades of those who didn’t check Facebook while studying; 79 percent of students did not believe that multitasking in the way mentioned above negatively affected their grades; 20 percent of students that use social media reported feeling connected to their institution; 75 percent of college students reported wanting to collaborate online.

Nobody would deny that everyone that checks Facebook every few minutes would be distracted and be less engaged in learning, absorb less knowledge and thus get lower results for their exams.

However, if the student is using Facebook to improve his or her knowledge, for example, by participating in a Facebook group created by a professor for students of a particular class, than the social network may have a positive influence on education and spark the student’s interest in learning certain subject matter. For example, lectures could be posted on these networking sites and students could respond and it would become an interactive environment to improve one's education. This is thus a positive effect through Facebook. But this is rarely the case for many users of Facebook who mostly just use it to talk to their to their friends.

An important benefit seen in the statistics is the ability of Facebook to make students feel socially connected with one another, with a greater sense of community. This can be beneficial in boosting students’ self-esteem. This is another positive effect of Facebook.

But, as we have also seen in the news, social media can also have a negative effect on emotional health when abused by cyberbullies who harass and torment peers. Social networkings like Facebook easily allow someone to cyber bully someone else without getting into trouble or having to confront them face to face. This causes high stress and would impact negatively.

Ultimately, how social media affects students may come down to how it is used and the frequency with which it is used.