Social Media and It’s Impact Free Essay Example

Abstract

This article discusses Social media and it impacts on the social lifestyle on students. As the topic provided for the assignment is generalized, I have chosen a topic by targeting youth academic audiences on the impact of social media. The impact of social media (SM) in our education system and society today are undoubtedly are very intense. Academicians in both developed and developing countries are more addicted to social media and its applications for varied reasons. These reasons can invariably change the social and personal lifestyle both academically and personally.

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This article targets to assess the impact of social media on youth academics’ social lifestyle. This study deployed a quantitative research methodology involving a questionnaire research instrument among university students. The findings include the following; social media refines how university students think, interact, communicate, their social lifestyle, and many more. The survey explored which social media sites are most popular among university students to have an impact on their social lifestyle.

Introduction

The usage of social media has been drastically improved since the usage and dependence on internet technology. They have become very popular and part and parcel of our social life. Thus this becomes one of the most researched topics on the usage of social media and its impact on many aspects like the performance of the students. Social media used mainly for sharing information has made into the essentials among students. The increase in evolution and trend of Internet technology has increased knowledge base, sharing, and transfer of almost all the information has become simpler and easier than before.

It has been easier for people now to easily share all the information right from motivational thoughts to intriguing concepts, photos, videos on social media.

As said earlier with the technology advancement and with the heavier usage of the internet, all these can be convenient time using smartphones, tablets, or personal computers. With the presence of social media globally, many students have improved their performance by utilizing the media wisely for gaining more knowledge meanwhile, many students use social media on things that adds no value to their academic such as chatting and uploading of pictures, commenting on the status of the post etc., Social media simply refers to online tools created for the purpose of interaction and content sharing among people in the community (Nyangeni, Du Rand & Van Rooyen, 2015).

In a simpler context, social media includes YouTube (social video sharing service), messaging, blogs, microblogs such as Twitter, social networking services (e.g. Facebook, WhatsApp, Instagram). This paper consists of collating information about the use of social media and its impact in the academic performance of university students. Firstly, reviewing the literature and the related work, secondly, this section three describes the research methodology, and the data analysis and results finally end with a conclusion.

Literature Study

Social media is becoming part of our society, changing social norms and culture (Al-Sharq,  Hashim & Kutbi, 2015). Information and content sharing is now a social desire (Wolf et al., 2016). It has changed the way that people especially students interact, communicate, and socialize in the outer world. Students can now participate in social discussions, posting comments, pictures, images, share ideas, and many more. At this point, one can say that SM influences youth daily life path and particularly the students (Rajeev, 2015). With the improvement in technology, much research has shown that social media plays an important role in the economic growth of a country, stays in touch with friends who is geographically distant from each other, and also allows the making of new friends which is a positive impact. Whereas to see the negative impacts which include; terrorist attack, cyberbullying, poaching for sexual exploitation, and time-wasting (Makinde, Odimegwu, Abdulmlik, Babalola & Fawole, 2016).

Research Methodology

This study uses both primary and secondary data sources. The primary data source was collected through questionnaires while the secondary data was built using a literature study. This study focused on the impact of social media on university students’ lifestyles. The study involved a random sampling method from various universities. The sample size of 270 students was considered in the study through the questionnaire data-gathering technique. Then, a descriptive research method was employed in exploring the impact of social media on the lifestyle of university students. In fact, the aim of the survey is to find answers to the following questions

1. R1 – Which social network is the most popular among university students?
2. R2- How many times the students spend time daily in social media?
3. R3 – What are the impact of social media on the social lifestyle of students?
4. R4 – To what extend do social media changes the social lifestyle of students? (Positive and negative).

Figure 1 shows the number of respondents on different social networks. By seeing the figure below YouTube seems to be the most popular site that is used among students, next is Twitter followed by LinkedIn, Instagram, and What’s app and Facebook. A sample of 270 respondents was used, 40% of the respondents use YouTube while 20% use Twitter to network. The results say that YouTube is almost twice popular than Twitter among university students.

R2- How many times the students spend time daily on social media?

While measuring the usage of social media, two questions were raised. The questions are as follows:

• How much time do the students spend browsing social networking sites daily?
• Do they favour to commit specific time using social media or at specific hours daily?

The results apparently suggest that that 45% of respondents indicate that they spend from one to three hours using the social networks daily. However, 47 respondents claim that less than one hour suffice them to browse their social profiles as presented in figure2.

R3 – What are the impact of social media on the social lifestyle of students?

This is one of the most researched subject by various researchers subjecting to various implication. This study highlights the impact of SM in different ways. This study found that 57 (82.6%) of the respondents agrees that social media have impacted on their social lifestyle. The study concord with researchers (Al-Sharq, Hashim & Kutbi, 2015; Wolf, Wenskovitch & Anton, 2016; Mingle & Adams, 2015) they believed that SM impact students both on social behaviour, education and others. The findings clearly indicates that SM has a considerable impact on social lifestyle on the students.

R4 – To what extent do social media changes social lifestyle of students? (Positive and negative).

It is understandable by the above study that the SM certainly changes the social lifestyle. The level of changes brought by SM has motivated students, youths, tutors, and academic institutions (Al-Sharq et al., 2015) and they like to be adopting it into their daily life activities and operations. According to Mingle and Adams (2015), SM brings behavioral change. This study question attempts to determine the extent of change brought in by SM.

Conclusion

The main purpose of this article was to examine the impact of social media among university students. This article study carefully determines the impact of social media usage on lifestyle. The article was successful in discovering various impacts of social media usage in both positive and negative ways which are nothing but the resultant of modern technology. The findings highlight the following; social media fine-tunes how students think, interacts, communicates, their social lifestyle, and many more. Appropriate recommendations were made which includes; making social media culture-oriented, students spending less time on social media in order to avoid addiction, also should limit believing everything they read and watch on social media sites and they should not indulge in making any abusive comments and sending unethical videos on social media.

References

1. Nyangeni, T., Du Rand, S & Van Rooyen, D. (2015). Perception of nursing students regarding the responsible use of social media in Eastern Cape. Curationis 38(2), Art. #1496, 9 pages.
   http://dx.doi. org/10.4102/curationis.v38i2.1496
2. Al-Sharqi, L, Hashim, K & Kutbi, I. (2015). Perceptions of Social Media Impact
   Comparison between Arts and Science Students. International Journal of Education and Social Science, 2(4), 122-131.
3. Wolf, D. M, Wenskovitch, J & Anton, B. B. social media: Does age, years of experience and educational level make a difference? Journal of Nursing Education and Practice, 6(2), 68-75.
4. Rajeev, M. M. J, (2015). Effects of Social Media on Social Relationships: A
   Descriptive Study on the Impact of Mobile Phones among Youth Population. 4(2), 11-16.
5. Makinde, O. A, Odimegwu. C. O, Abdulmlik, J. O, Babalola, S. O & Fawole, O. I. (2016). Gender-Based Violence following Social Media Acquaintance in Nigeria. African Journal of Reproductive Health December Vol. 20 (4): 67
6. Mingle, J & Adams, M. (2015). Social Media Network Participation and Academic Performance In Senior High Schools
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8. American Scientific Research Journal for Engineering, Technology, and Sciences (ASRJETS) (2018) Volume 40, No 1, pp 77-88