Role of Social Media in Education was made as part of UGC presentations held on our college campus. It covers the impact, both positive and negative, that social media has on students, professionals, and on- and off-campus communication. By: Sarah Imran Ali Rizvi Mass Media student of Bharatiya Vidya Bhavan's College

1. Role of
Social Media
in Education
By: Sarah Imran Ali Rizvi
Student Member of UGC
College team

2. WHAT IS SOCIAL MEDIA?
• Interactive websites and applications that enable the users to create and
share content for social networking.
• The content varies in information, ideas, interests, forms (text, video,
images) .
• The social networking version of today started existing because of
 the advent of Internet in the early 1980’s
 the mainstreaming of world wide web
 provided us the ideal medium of social networking through social
media.
• Earliest social media platforms include Friendster, LinkedIn (popular in
business community), MySpace, Orkut.
• Friendster and Orkut gained popularity among school and college
students.
• Major breakthrough- launch on Facebook in 2004
• India is the leading country based on number of facebook users (300
million) as of January 2019.
• Other popular social media sites and apps today – Twitter, Youtube,
Instagram, Whatsapp, Snapchat, Quora, Classmates, Reverbnation
(music), Skype, Pinterest, google+, Tumblr .

3. DEMOGRAPHICS OF
SOCIAL MEDIA USAGE

4. • By the statistics, most of the social media users are teens and young
adults.
• Age restrictions : Nearly all social media sites require the users to be atleast 13
years old.
• This includes Facebook, Snapchat, Twitter, Instagram, Musical.ly and Skype.
• Whilst there is no age restriction for watching videos on YouTube, users need
to be 13 or older to have their own YouTube account.
• Yet there are many, who
register with fake age information.
• This largely affects their
lifestyle, psychology, growth and
development.
• Institutions like schools,
colleges, coaching center and the
associated faculty have started
using social media to connect
with their students for various
useful purposes.
• Another statistics show that
51% of young adults believe it is
hard to give up social media.

5. POSITIVE EFFECTS OF SOCIAL
MEDIA • Various forms of
data shared – images,
text, videos, pdf files,
MS Office documents –
multiple ways of learning
and understanding.
• Global platform –
socialize virtually with
people from around the
world.
• Smooth flow of
knowledge - Students
can easily access the data, learn, modify (if needed) and share.
• Updates knowledge base – Instant availability of historical, scholarly
or even live updates of events.

6. • Learning from various sources – Students can choose their
educator, group or activity they want to follow for information.
• Being prepared – social networking sites showcase the trends that
run around the world, students get an idea of what is expected from
them.
• Sharing what they feel or think – a platform for all – introverts,
extroverts or ambivert can simply type their opinion.
• Information anytime and anywhere : Quora helps to get answers
with up-votes and down-votes by users

7. NEGATIVE EFFECTS OF SOCIAL
MEDIA
• Reduced focus on learning as
well as on retaining information.
• Reduced academic
performance - students are
attempting to multi-task. They are
trying to check various social
media sites while they study.
• Reduced ability to
concentrate on tasks on their
hand due to the distraction that is brought by all these social media sites.
• Ineffective inter-personal communication - lesser time on socializing in
person
• Lack of body signals besides other nonverbal cues, including tone and
inflection.

8. • Lax attitude for using proper spelling as well as grammar - unable to
write effectively without the aid of the spell check feature of a computer.
• Anonymity that is available on the Internet has made many students
forget that they need to filter any information that they post.
• Physical health effects
- more stomach aches,
sleeping problems, fatigue
as well as anxiety and
depression.
• Psychological effects
- Narcissistic tendencies,
anxiety, depression,
antisocial behaviours,
aggressive tendencies.

9. INTEGRATING SOCIAL MEDIA INTO
EDUCATION
As social media is an integrated aspect of a student’s life, the following
steps have been taken and can further be taken for enhancing the usage
of social networking sites in education and personality development of
students:
• Use of YouTube for database
of educational videos – links
shared with students,
accompanied by classroom
discussions. (Ex : National
Geographic , Discovery channel,
Science, Literary channel
subscriptions)
• Skype used for virtual/ video
interaction with subject-matter
experts.
• Sharing of scholarly notes available on various authentic sites with
author’s name for in-depth study.

10. • Quick flow of information, orders,
institutional updates – through
institutional/formal groups on social media
• A two way communication – bridges
the gap between the institution and a
student.
• Encouraging time management –
Smart division of time for offline/ textual,
online reading and outdoor activities.
• Teaching media ethics – analysing
online behaviour of students.
• Good inter-personal relationship - Professors of some institutions use
apps and sites like Instagram, WhatsApp, Snapchat, Facebook to connect
with students.
•Educational blogs and vlogs (video blogs) to provide multiple ways of
learning concepts.