Social media is a communication platform created to disseminate information through the internet. Social media has had tremendous growth and effects on students since the early years of its development. Students have widely accepted its use due to the quick dissemination of information, communication, and feedback. Online users’ feedback on social media is highly valued and has been widely accepted to influence critical decisions made by students. The decisions made have both positive and negative effects. The positive effects are the advantages, while the negative effects are the disadvantages. However, in this discussion, the disadvantages of social media outweigh the advantages, thus posing a threat to students.
Social media allows communication with other students, tutors, family, and friends. It enables students to create a communication network for developing their careers. This form of the network leads to opportunities that may land the student a job or develop his interest and learn new things. In addition, the network becomes the channel for valuable information the student requires in terms of studies. This makes social media a valuable tool for students in the current age.
Social media is a great marketing tool for most startups that students usually own. The developer students usually find leverage in using social media as a platform to create awareness of their new product. In addition, social media reduces the amount of capital the students require to start a company. The advantage created by social media in this form has largely impacted the growth of startups, making more students ready to learn and optimistic to attempt innovation. In the attempts to innovate, students gain new skills and obtain a drive to overcome challenges posed by the problem.
Over the years, social media has been addictive, making a victim more dopamine. Dopamine is a hormone responsible for addiction in humans. The very human nature of finding positive comments attractive and pleasant draws students to social media. This makes social media a distractive tool for time management and positive habit formations. This is because the students rarely have time to read, meditate and form new positive habits without thinking of the phone and what their online friends will say about them. The students tend to reason by analogy rather than question a concept in depth. When students reason by analogy, there is slow growth in the technological sector of a country leading to a lagging economy.
Social media is responsible for creating and forming unrealistic expectations in student life. This is caused by a lack of online authenticity and vain belief on the student’s side. ( Lau, W. W. 2017). For example, most students desire to be like the star musicians that always look fancy on social media. The appearance of wealth creates an illusion of being wealthy once in the music industry. The students then tend to ignore the factors that made the artist achieve the heights of success, such as; signing into record labels and having a network of established artists. These forms of illusion lead to high drop-out rates among the students in an attempt to be wealthy as social media artists.
Social media is responsible for the spread of violence and vulgar language among students. Most socialites and artists engage in public drama to seek attention from online users. (Akram, W., & Kumar, R. 2017). They usually promote an agenda by releasing music and coming up with phrases about an occurrence. Most phrases used become vulgar to intimidate and enthrall their online enemy. Students usually mistake these phrases and words as the trend by using and abusing them. The abuse of words results in chaos and fights among the students. The thematic expressions inhabited by some of the music also promote the violent culture and use of abusive language. A good example is the “thug life” song released by one of the famous hip-hop artists Tupac Shakur.
Conclusively, social media has an adverse effect on students, both positive and negative. Some positive effects are quick dissemination of information, communication, and networking. On the other hand, the negative effects include; the promotion of propaganda and violence, addiction, and unrealistic expectation, among others. From the discussion, the negatives tend to outweigh the positives, especially for students.
Reference
Lau, W. W. (2017). Effects of social media usage and social media multitasking on the academic performance of university students. Computers in human behavior, 68, 286-291.
Akram, W., & Kumar, R. (2017). A study on positive and negative effects of social media on society. International Journal of Computer Sciences and Engineering, 5(10), 351-354.
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