This article explores the different positive and negative effects of social media on students. Social media enables users to create online platforms or communities to share ideas, information, personal messages and to participate in social networking. Some of the social media networks such as Instagram, Snapchat, Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr, LinkedIn and many more.

We discover today that students are the main user of these social media platforms. The use of social media can either be of positive effect or negative effect on their lives. Social media might be of many advantages to students, but it can also be a cause of concern on some. These articles outline how social media can affect students either positively or negatively.

Positive Effects of Social Media on students.

1. An extensive source of knowledge

Students can gain more knowledge through several online learning platforms made available on social media.  Students can learn from YouTube videos giving them a wider range of knowledge. It, therefore, enhances the academic performance of The students increasing their capabilities through information gathering. Students can easily share important data for classwork or assignments enabling them to gather more information. Those who understand their lessons can help others who are struggling.

2. Interaction and connectivity

Social media can enable students to meet like-minded people on online groups and platforms. They can join online communities that cater to their course of study,  school environment, and other important factors. Joining such groups on Twitter, Whatsapp and Facebook can help them to access quality information when needed. Students can get information on what is happening in institutes they want to study in by joining online communities.

3. Communicate and receive help from one another

Students can better communicate and interact with themselves through the help of social media.  It brings them together with fellow students who share the same problem with them.  They can also open up about the areas they are facing difficulty in studying and find others who understand better to put them through. When they are experiencing difficulty in any school work,  they can find a genius to help them with it.

4. Interaction with Educators

Students can gain access to important information being passed by their teachers or school authorities through social media. They can gain information from others on activities going on their schools and classroom.

5. Enhances brain functionality

Social media help increase the brain functionality of students. Students who are part of large social media networks are better at remembering certain things.  This is as a result of many faces and names they have to store in their brains. In addition, subjects discussed over these platforms can be better understood and comprehended than within the classroom environment due to freedom of expression and the increased flow of information.

Read more: The Importance, Types And Scope Of Educational Technology

6. Improve comprehension and intelligence

When students make use of social media in a positive way, it can cause an increase in their intelligence and comprehension. This is because extensive information about future prospects can be achieved through the use of sites such as LinkedIn. Platforms such as Facebook can also give access to experts in their potential job disciplines who can help direct them on the appropriate steps to enhance their skills.

7. Freedom of expression

Social media help students to express themselves more. They can express their ideas and what they have learned helping them to retain more of the information in their brain. This can help them develop social skills like reading,  writing, and Calculations. The more they share what they know or have learned,  the more they gain more knowledge. 

Negative Effects of Social Media on students.

8. Lack of proper time management

Social media can cause students to waste their entire day on chatting and going through posts online especially for those who cannot go about their lives without making use of social media. This may cause them not to pay attention to their lessons as they either chatting or reading the post of others online.  They end up using up the time that should be spent in studying, chatting with their friends.  This can end up leading to bad grades as they can no longer think for themselves.

9. A source of distraction

Social media can be of distraction to students and also help them cheat in their exams or quizzes.  Many would want to concentrate on their social media accounts more instead of interest heir studying.  They prefer to be online where they do not get any useful and necessary information or knowledge rather than focusing on their studies which is way more important. Answers can easily be shared on social media groups and aid the students to cheat easily. 

10. Enhances antisocial behaviour

Another effect of social media on a student is the fact that students can end up being anti-socials and introverts when they prefer online interactions to have real and physical conversations with friends and family members. This can cause them to never leave the house for outdoor activities like picnics and camping. They play more attention to their phones than to family even when they are eating. This can lead to social isolation.

11. Overuse causes health problems

Social media can bring about health problems as the use of smartphones, laptops and other gadgets with a screen to access social media can cause harm to health especially when used for long hours.  It can cause eye strain, bad posture (from staying in one position for a long time)  and physical and mental stress.

12. Spelling and grammar problems

Chatting continuously on social media using abbreviations instead of real words can in the learning of students as they tend to remember the abbreviations instead of actual words. Also, spell check available when typing makes them not to put much effort into getting their spellings right.  This might lead to lots of spelling error when given a pen and paper.

Read more: 35 disadvantages of technology in Education

13. Risk of losing sight of the bigger picture

Social media can cause students to stray away from their personal and career development goals. The time that should have been spent on performing activities that will help them built and develop their goals,  making their goals a reality is spent on social media doing unnecessary things.

14. Disrupts brain activity

This is among the negative effects of social media on students hence students can become addicted to the social media that a single minute away from it can result in a panic or anxiety attack. This is detrimental to their thought patterns and can lead to high dependence on chat rooms to do their thinking for them. A lot of students who overuse Social media has been shown to lack creativity or ability to break out of the trend and become something better.

15. Exposure to sexual content

Social media exposes students to sexual contents that depict fake and harmful sexual stereotypes and behaviours that can influence the students negatively before they begin to discover their sexual identities.  This is indeed one of the bad effects of social media to students life since it can lead them to have unreasonable expectations pertaining to sex since they do not know the truth about sex.

16. Disrupts sleeping patterns

Spending time on social media especially at night can cause lack of sleep in the student. The blue light which is supplied by the screens of their gadget reduces the levels of melatonin (which is the hormone that controls sleep) in the body. This can later lead to stress and an inability to concentrate in class. And when students are unable to learn in class,  they end up getting bad grades.

Read more: 20 Effects of Mobile Phones on Students – Positive And Negative

17. Lack of Focus

Multitasking on various social media accounts on different social media networks can lead to being unable to focus on multiple activities. This is because the brain can no longer on the activities which it is supposed to do bit only on social media.

18. Get involved in terrible activities

Social media exposes the student to social vices. Some students are involved in sexting which is chatting with sexual innuendos where there is an exchange of inappropriate sexual pictures and can this lead to child pornography. Students might be influenced to want to do what their other peers are doing which can be bad habits such as indecent pictures and dressing.

19. Encourages fake personalities

Social media networks lead students to portray an unreal personality because they want more likes. They believe that if they act in a certain way on social media, then they will become more popular on social media.

20. Risk of developing depression

Social media can lead to low self-esteem and depression in students. Unreal and edited pictures on social media can make them feel more inadequate in themselves. They believe they need to be like those people before they can be accepted by society. This leads to envy, low self-esteem, and depression. They feel depressed when they cannot be like those perfect images, they have seen no matter how much they try.

From this article, it is discovered that social media can either make students capable or inept. We cannot ban social media entirely because of its numerous bad effects as it is also very useful to students. However, we can teach them better ways to use Social media while enhancing all-around productivity, morals, and intelligence. Social media can be quite a good thing, but I do believe it is becoming quite confusing. What are your thoughts on the growing amounts of Social media applications?