Impact of Social Media Usage on Students’ Behaviour and Habits

With the development of technology, social media is an indispensable part of our lives. We can not stop to use one of the social media tools in our daily lives because they have functions to make our life easier, but this is not the only reason for using them. There are a lot of reasons to use a social media tool such as having a good time, doing research about a topic or meet new people whose hobbies or interests are same with ours. Thanks to these social media applications, people have the power to reach information fast and send it to others easily. Social media has changed people’s lives so far and it seems that it will continue to alter people’s habits and behaviour significantly. Education is one of the fields which has been affected by social media tools. For example, learning a language while sitting at a sofa at home or attending a class in another city or country from your living room is not a big deal these days. According to Susan Greenfield, an Oxford University researcher in her article The Quest For Identity In The 21st Century, on Daily Mail UK 14thSeptember, 2010, as growing numbers of people discover the potential of the World Wide Web and as they become active parts of it and as technology becomes even more advanced, expanded, accessible and sophisticated, current forms of communication will transform, taking advantage of the crowdsourcing phenomenon.

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Social media utilization has reached its peak on every age groups lately. But in this essay, I am going to delve into how social media has affected student’s behaviour and habits along with what the negative and positive effects of using social media actively are, how students use social media in their daily life, in which social media means they are engaged with mostly. There are quite a few social media networks that we can use these days in both our mobile phones and computers. Facebook, Twitter, Whatsapp, Youtube, Instagram, Snapchat, Linkedin are some of which students use mostly in their daily life.

Whatsapp is one of the most convenient social media networks to communicate for people. It is an instant message application and it is free to use. Students use Whatsapp in order to send texts, pictures to other people and it is also possible to create a group in the application so that they can discuss topics related to their daily lives’ activities and problems or they can share information about their courses with their classmates. According to research carried out by Michael Karikari Appiah, 200 students attended the research use WhatsApp ten or more times per day and they spend a lot of time using it. They even use WhatsApp during their lecture and they accepted that using WhatsApp that much affects their performance for their course. Moreover, students have mentioned suffering from some health issues such as back pain, shoulder pain, eye irritation etc. This study had uncovered that students spend a lot of time using Whatsapp and so they sometimes skip their meals so as to be online and not to miss anything and this is another drawback of overusing Whatsapp and may lead to other health issues for students.

Facebook is another social media platform students utilize to share their pictures, videos, write comments about a news or someone’s post. Moreover, students can use Facebook to communicate with their friends because it also provides users to chat their friends, this function is used by student but the risky situation may be appeared when they contact with people whom they do not know in their daily life and this sometimes causes dangerous situation, for instance, a stranger may show inappropriate behaviour which has never been experienced by the student. That’s why this kind of situation can be problematic for especially kids who use social media active. To protect kids or adolescent from this, parents should be careful about their kids' social media utilization. Besides, Youtube is a rising trend lately, a lot of students who are aged from 6 to 16 use this platform extensively. But, the most common complaint from the parents is that children spend a lot of time watching youtube videos. Actually, when Youtube is used in a beneficial way, it presents a lot for helping to learn new things. There are students who use Youtube to watch educational videos or watch to learn something they are curious about. Because you can almost find whatever you want on Youtube. The main problem is that some students watch online game videos and because of that they spend hours in front of the screen and they do not their homework or they can not finish their project in time and this situation affects their education negatively. Accordingly, they are unsuccessful at school and their relationship with their parents and their teachers get harmed at the end. This leads them to spend plenty of time in social networking. Because being bad at school and not having a good relationship with parents direct them to the point where they feel better and they may isolate themselves as a way of escaping from these issues and it makes the situation worse for them. On the other hand, users can have their own channel on Youtube and they create their own videos. The other impact of youtube on students’ behaviour and habits is that students try to get people attention with those videos and the number of subscribers is a way of showing how popular they are among their peers or around. That’s why they create all kinds of videos to be watched because viewing rating is another factor which demonstrates popularity. After a point, their only aim is to be watched and liked no matter what situation they are in and so a lot of absurd and odd videos are created even if the user creating video does not like what s/he does in the video, ratings and number of likes matter for the user. Another reason for having more subscriber is that Youtube pays money if the user reaches a certain number of the subscriber. The more subscriber the user has, the more money s/he gets paid by Youtube. Hence, the idea of earning money by making a video on Youtube is one of the reasons for users and when we look at the users on Youtube, students - even younger ones - make up a big proportion of the channel owners in youtube.

Twitter is another popular social media network for students. In their daily life, they make use of twitter. It is a platform that you can express your own ideas or write a comment about a topic but there is a limit for it. It is only allowed to use 280 characters to write in a tweet. It is so useful platform to get news instantly or reach ideas of someone whom you want to know if s/he has a twitter account and use it for putting ideas. For example, I follow some academics to learn what they say about their own field and I also get information when something important happens in my country instantly from news accounts immediately. Students use Twitter to write their own ideas about their daily lives or they comment on a subject that is interesting for them. It is used to communicate with people as well. Twitter allows students to connect with each other and create uninterrupted communication (Dunlap & Lowenthal, 2009). As far as I have observed twitter users so far, students usually use twitter to send messages to their friends or their boyfriend and girlfriend implicitly. For example, when a student feels bad about having an argument with his/her friend and s/he prefers using twitter to express how s/he feels about it and writes a tweet to explain his/her situation or feelings. Then s/he expects that the person who has an argument with sees it. These kinds of situations lead students to abstain from face to face communication. They prefer using these social media tools to solve their problems even if it is not a good solution for all the time. Twitter is a functional social media tool if it is used for getting information or contacting people but if it is utilized for other than these beneficial functions, it can be harmful. As I mentioned before, it may cause students to escape from face to face communication or spending more time by using it brings about skipping their daily responsibilities.

Instagram is another popular social media network these days. According to my experience as a teacher, I have seen that Instagram is used a lot by students particularly and they spend so much time by using Instagram. It is a platform that you can upload your photos and thanks to Instagram's filter you can create really good photos and you can share stories which can be a short video or a photo on your account. Students use these functions to demonstrate their daily life. As it is on youtube, the number of likes and number of followers matter for students. I have seen some comments which said ‘ follow me ’ or ‘ if you follow me I follow you back ‘ under an official sports club account. It can be understood from this example that how important the number of followers is for them. They try different ways to get people's attention around them and to enhance their number of likes and followers. While they are engaging with Instagram so much time, they may miss their own life. Because they create a life for them in the application and they only care about what goes on there or they take seriously more than it should be who likes their pictures or who drops a comment about them.

Snapchat is one of the most popular social media networks of students. Because content is shared quickly and easily. Recent research demonstrates that 77% of college students use snapchat and %55 them use it to communicate daily in the US. In Ireland, 84% of students who are aged between 15 and 18 have a snapchat account and 85% of those use it on a daily basis. In snapchat, people can send instant photos to each other but the photo disappears after the receiver sees it. The students usually utilize snapchat for fun. Using it for exchanging information during class or when they see something interesting around them are also prevalent. Some teachers use snapchat to communicate with their students, for instance, they can send a picture which is related to the lecture they teach previous classes and this is a beneficial way to get students attention to the topic. With teachers engaging in these kinds of social media tools, students’ interest in the topic can increase and this leads students to take more time for their lessons. It is a beneficial way of using social media network for students. They can even learn something new or consolidate what they learn in the classroom while they are not at school.

Linkedin is another social media network to be used by students. It is mostly utilized by university students to get a job. Thanks to Linkedin, it is easy to contact with employers and find a job. Because even a student does not apply for a job, s/he can be found by the employers. Because the user creates an account which includes all information and skills about himself or herself and when an employer needs an employee, by searching with the certain features they can find the appropriate candidate. Social media networks like Linkedin makes the recruitment process easier for both employee and employer. They also use Skype to make an interview even if both sides are in different countries. Those social media tools have changed the way of recruitment processes so far.

Those which I mention above are the social media networks which are used commonly by students and they are affected by them both in positive and negative ways in terms of the way of using as well. Utilization of these social media tools triggers students curiosity and self-learned skills as well. There are students who create their own social media network, even in younger age and their desire to designing social media networks leads them to create new things in the field of social media. For example, Google which is the most popular search engine was designed by Stanford students in late 1990s and Facebook which is one of the most popular social media networks was created by Harvard students in 2004, they became the most used networks in less than 10 years.

In the next sections, I am going to delve into the effects of social media usage on students in general in positive and negative ways respectively.

It is evident that social media has carried academic life to a different dimension for both students and academics since the introduction of social media means and a quite few studies show that it takes place in an important position in the academic life. Utilization of social media networks facilitate learning and create some advantages such as enhancing the relationship, improving learning desire and developing collaborative abilities. For example, according to the study carried out by Jain, Verma, Tiwari(2012), titled “the impact of social networking in promoting education” revealed that students benefit from chatting with other students, teachers and external sources to acquire knowledge.

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Students used to go to a library to do a research for their assignments and they might not have found the book which they needed. This caused them to lose a lot of time which is the most precious thing for students. These days, a research can be done by clicking on an icon immediately and assignments can be sent by dragging the folder into a certain place on the website. Moreover, students do not need to gather for brainstorming, they can use various social media networks to exchange their ideas regardless of where they are. With the help of social media networks, time and place are not a problem for students when they need to gather. It is ironic that social media usage causes wasting a lot of time for those who use social media for futile things such as meaningless chats or watching online game videos whereas utilization of social media effectively in a beneficial way enables students to save their time.

On the other hand, social media may cause significant troubles for students unless they are careful about using it. Davies and Cranston(2008), enumerated some of the risks associated with social media which included criminal activities such as identity theft and fake contacts which is prevalent today, sexual abuse or harassment and unsuitable advertising. Nowadays, cyberbullying is another common problem among students. “ It is any behaviour performed through electronic or digital media by individuals or groups that repeatedly communicates hostile or aggressive messages intended to inflict harm or discomfort on others” (Tokunaga,2010). When a student has trouble with one of his friends and he is not capable of solving it by face to face communication, it is possible that he applies to cyberbullying so as to take revenge. Sexual harassment is another concern that is faced by students in the online world. They can be sometimes cruel as much as adults. When I was working as a teacher in Turkey, an incident which could be called sexual harassment happened to one of my students and she was the cleverest student in her class. One of the boys in her class asked her out and she refused him kindly but he continued to insist even if he was rejected several times by the girl. Then the boy and his friends started to send inappropriate pictures of themselves from all social media networks which the girl used and they kept doing it until the girl complained about him. But after all, the girl did not attend her classes for a while because she needed to get help to get rid of what she experienced during that time. Unfortunately, it cost her a lot, she missed some of her exams. They may not be sometimes capable of empathizing with their peers because of their age and they can attack each other mercilessly. These kinds of incidents have occurred at schools frequently and since the one who bullies others uses a fake identity to hide his own identity, so it is sometimes hard to find and solve this problem for parents and teachers. The one who suffers from cyberbullying may be affected psychologically and this situation cause to avoid going to school.

Teachers are also concerning about student’s writing skills because of that they use texting and instant messaging lingo in their school work. Students create new words to communicate with each other but it harms their writing skills significantly and this situation leads them to get lower marks due to not using appropriate language for school work.

Parents and teachers need to take some precautions in order to prevent the negative effects of social media usage. What can be done to create a safe environment for the student in the online world? Firstly, seminars should be held at school or universities to inform students about social media utilization and information should be given about the positive and negative effects of social media usage by experts such as psychologist, sociologist. Secondly, teachers or lecturers should make students aware of not to spend too much time using social media to avoid being addicted to them for useless chatting. Thirdly, authorities may restrict mobile phone using during classes to minimize their use. What’s more parents should monitor their children’s social media accounts and make contact with them about their activities in the online world. They should ask them to let themselves know if children face with the unusual situation during contacting with people in social media. Besides this, parents should take their time to spend it with their children by doing social activities, because these social activities keep children away from the online world and contribute to parent-children relationship positively. As it strengths the bond between child and parent, child feel safer to talk to his/her parents when s/he encounters with an inappropriate circumstance.

In conclusion, social media networks are a significant part of students’ and parents’ lives, so their effect is inevitable for them. As I mention above, they facilitate plenty of things in students’ daily lives on the understanding that they are utilized properly. For when they are included in daily life overly, their impact can be devastating. It is clearly seen that spending a lot of time online is the foremost problem for students. Parents and authorities work together to handle social media usage for students. They should be lead to use of social media networks in a beneficial way as much as possible.  

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