By Abdulsalam M. Nuhu
dabsman63@gmail.com
Social media is the general term used for all kinds of online arenas that give room for social interactions which include chatting, sharing of ideas and opinions and of recent, news updates.
Not long had the social media been invented than it got popular especially among the youths and the students. Despite the tremendous developments social media have come with, it also came with devastating effects especially on the side of students worldwide.
Facebook, Twitter, Whatsapp, BBM, 2go, etc. make the most popular social Networks in Africa and perhaps world at large majorly because of their ability to be supported by almost all internet–abled phones. Social media has done much damage to students of this century virtually because of its invention in the said generation. Not withstanding, whatever has disadvantages has advantages as well and vice versa. Social media has done little good to people and the students. Social media has done a lot in bringing students or people at large together irrespective of their geographical location. It helps people in getting fast access to information and it widens people’s horizon of understanding of certain issues as it is a pool of ideas and opinions. It gives serious students a room to interact and come up with possible solutions to their educational problems. It encourages group studies if possible at all.
In viewing the negative effects of social media on the students of this generation, it has to be classified into different classes viz:
COMMUNICATION SKILLS: As students more often chat online on their social media platforms, their communication has kept on diminishing to the extent that they no longer communicate and interact effectively in person with other people. More often, employers have complained about lack of good communication skills of the fresh graduates of this century which results from the same reason. To be honest, effective communication skill is one of the keys to success in the real world.
REDUCES LANGUAGE USAGE AND CREATIVE WRITING SKILLS: As it is widely known, correct spellings of words are not used in chatting, use of slangs or shortened forms of words is preferred. Students now rely on computer grammar and spelling check features and ignorantly, this reduces their language skills and performance. The culture of checking up meaning or correct spellings of words in the dictionary is brought to rest all because of this reason. Students now rely on their phones for virtually everything which is not very right as it has lots of distractive abilities.
MULTI TASKING: Nowadays, students do chat while studying and some even claiming it helps them get things into their heads faster which is just a blatant lie. Even under normal circumstances, while you are focused, some things hardly get into the memory not to talk of when your attention is being divided. Chatting while studying is nothing but an obvious distraction to studies. This habit has contributed immensely to students poor performance in schools.
TIME WASTAGE: While claiming to be searching and studying online, students are distracted because they are attracted to their social media sites and before they realize, time is gone when they have not completed half their research. A lot of things are there that will make you forget about what you are actually there for. This has caused students not delivering their home works in the specified time and end up with poor grades.
REDUCED LEARNING CAPABILITY: students prefer using their easily accessible social media to make research which obviously is not the best as even people with no authority can put up their lame ideas. The habit of going to the Library is now like a thing of the past. Library is a place one can get reliable answer to his problem because care is taken while introducing books in the library as regards authority of the books in it. But student’s learning and research capability are killed by social networks.
ADDICTION: This is the ultimate effect of social media. Students become addicted to it because they can not do without it. They end up with very poor performance in school and finally find the school uninteresting. Students are more concerned about number of LIKES on their Facebook accounts or FOLLOWERS on their Twitter handles than their GRADES in the school. This results in students dropping out of school and consequently becoming internet fraudsters and other related offences.
Comparing the negative effects of social media on students to the positive effects, we can easily see that the goodies the positive effects do comes no where close to the harms the negative effects do to students. There are alternatives to the positive sides while no alternative is there for the negative effects as they are almost unavoidable. Therefore, as students, the social media is not a good arena for us as it goes a long way in causing damage to our academics and consequently to our lives.
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