What are the impact, advantages and disadvantages of social media to students? Since the advent of Social media in late 20th century, humans who are Social animals have been inclined to make use of Social media to enjoy its numerous benefits which includes: Social networking and Communication with one another. The development of more sophisticated and enticing Social media however has made Social media become a habit amongst students. While there are numerous advantages of Social Media, its disadvantages flow in the same vein.

This article highlights these advantages and disadvantages of social media to students, and I trust that by the end of this article every reader will become acquainted with the meaning of Social media, its advantages, and disadvantages to a student.

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What Is Social Media?

According to Wikipedia, Social Media are interactive digitally mediated technologies that facilitate the creation or exchange of information, ideas, career interests, and other forms of expression via virtual communities.

The Merriam Webster dictionary further defines Social Media as the forms of electronic communication (such as website for social networking and micro blogging) through which users create online communities to share information, ideas, personal messages, and other contents.

The above definition implies that Social Media was created for purposes of: Sharing information, exchanging personal messages, viewing videos and images, sharing ideas, and posting. Examples of Social media includes: Whatsapp, LinkedIn, Tik tok, Twitter, Tumblr, Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat, YouTube, Quora, Telegram, Wechat, Pinterest, amongst others.

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Advantages (merits) of Social Media To Students

1. Social Media aids research: Social media is beneficial to students, especially students of the university or other tertiary institutions who are charged with term paper, project, and other forms of academic activities which require research, as it aids their research.

The social media aids research through vital information provided on various social media platforms, blogs, and websites. This enables students to make a search on a particular topic and instantly get results. Also through the Social Media, such student will be able to ask questions to friends and even strangers; as there are currently some social media platforms where question and genuine answers on any particular topic or question is entertained. This will help the student in acquiring the necessary materials and information for his or her research work.

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2. Social Media is a tool of receiving information: Nowadays, a student can barely survive without Social media. Information even to the barest minimum are usually communicated to students of tertiary institutions and above via Social media. Hence, your unavailability on Social media will mean that you are bound to miss vital information’s. However, where you are available on Social media it will be a tool of receiving information.

3. Communication: Social Media is very important to students as it helps them communicate with one another without requiring physical contact or connection. Hence through the social media, students can make friends, develop relationship, and build connection with others. This is what we refer to as networking and it is essential because it often helps students to discover opportunities while in school, not to mention where such connection may lead the student outside school.

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4. Improves Learning: Social media improves learning of students as individuals, and standard of learning of a school. As an individual, through the social media a student comes across materials, articles, stories, quotes, status update, documentaries, amongst others which will make such student learn one or two important things. I for example became grammatically eloquent through words I learnt from the social media.

Same is applicable to every student who must have learnt something vital via the social media, even something as basic as personal message on social media could ensure you learn a lot each day depending on the person you are chatting with.

As an educational institution, Social Media improves the standard of learning thanks to the advent of modernized and sophisticated social media platforms which has resulted in schools introducing online classes and programmes wherein students will learn from the comfort of their home.

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5. Brand Development: It is often said that School should pass through you as you pass through school. Sequel to this, students are usually encouraged to start up an initiative or build a brand while in school. Social Media which boasts of a very large audience is the potent tool for students who have a brand to develop and promote such brand even without spending money.

6. Social Media helps students to express themselves in ways such as posting pictures, posting videos, creating contents, writing articles, poems, short stories, posting on blogs, making podcasts, amongst others.

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7. Networking: As already mentioned above, social media is an effective communication medium that enables interconnectivity amongst individuals and groups. This is a major advantage because it promotes networking amongst students with like mindedness.

It creates an avenue for new friendship and allies to be formed which in turn brings about self-discovery, self-development and human capital development in general. In order to brushup on goals and objectives, networking is quite important and that is what social media provides for a student.

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8. Creativity: Social media as we know it is a communication channel however, it can be used for several other purposes that could be more productive and rewarding to students.

The digitization of most aspects of human endeavors has created an opportunity for students to venture into different areas of life in form of diversification. It creates an avenue for creativity.

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9. Confidence: Self security is one of the major challenge most people have. Some persons are introverts and find it very challenging to freely and boldly communicate with other people face-to-face. It is sometimes considered as inferiority complex and could spur intimidation in such people.

This is where social media comes in to breach the gap. Since social media is a virtual interactive platform, anyone could freely interact with who ever they want not minding the numbers. They are more confident it such situations and are able to effectively share their opinions on substantive matters.

10. Self Evaluation: Because no one lives and survives in isolation, the concept of the world being a global village is affirmed by social connectivity. As people interact on social media platforms and share valuable ideas, they get to do some self evaluation on themselves and know areas they need to improve on and how to effectively achieve such improvement.

This is one of the major advantages of social media because the absence of such platform might leave one in the dark as to the trending phenomenon.

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Disadvantages (Demerits) of Social Media To Students

The following are the disadvantages of Social media to students:

1. Social Media is distractive: A wise man once said that “Distraction leads to destruction.” Thus via the Social Media a whole lot of students become distracted, and this often leads to the destruction of their academic excellence; which is the major reason why they are in school.

2. Social Media is addictive: This flows from the fact that Social Media distracts students as a result of their overreliance on it. This overreliance makes students become addicted to social media, and this will have a negative effect on such student within and outside school. This is the reason why you may see a student pressing phone in a crucial meeting or chatting on Social Media while in Church.

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3. Leads to poor time management: Time is of essence in school where there is always an academic calendar which must be adhered to. Failure to work alongside this calendar is detrimental to the student’s bid to move into the next class. This is why time management is very essential for students in school. However, Social Media impedes time Management as you could see a student spend hours on Social Media forgetting all other thing he or she was meant to do.

4. Cyber bullying: One devastating disadvantage of Social Media is Cyber bullying. Cyber bullying is the use of electronic communication to bully a person, typically by sending messages of intimidating or threatening nature. Cyber bullying is prevalent on Social Media, and has led to numerous cases of students taking their own lives.

5. Social Media makes students Lazy: Social Media makes students lazy as most students will rather stay at home and copy and paste the opinion of the author of an article rather than go to the library to make findings, enquires, and formulate an independent opinion on such topic or subject of discourse.

6. Social Media facilitates Criminal activities: Social Media induces students to be either victims or perpetrators of fraudulent activities. There have been numerous cases of students who have been duped online, resulting in them becoming stranded to cope with the financial demands of school.

On the other hand, Social Media has induced some students to become perpetrators of fraudulent activities of scamming fellow students, lecturers or citizens, and in no mean time leading to such student losing focus in school activities, and dropping out in the process.

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7. Fake news: The possibilities and opportunities available on social media for students are quite enormous however, there are quite a level of exposure to spurious information out there for students consumption and it in turn disabuse their mind on the order of things while reshaping their mindset on a negative trend. It is quite a disadvantage because it seem to be very prevalent in recent time.

The rate at which such information spread even when it can’t be easily verified, students consume these information without even making reasonable effort to verify it’s authenticity.

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8. Hacking: Cyber phishing and system interruptions is also another major disadvantage of social media used by students as it exposes the students to online hackers and fraudsters who are out there with malicious intent to take undue advantage of such student with vulnerable exposure on the cyber space.

It is quite regrettable as the level of security system on some of these social media sites are not strong enough to ensure privacy for students using the platforms.

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9. Fake News: The possibilities and opportunities available on social media for students are quite enormous however, there are quite a level of exposure to spurious information out there for students consumption and it in turn disabuse their mind on the order of things while reshaping their mindset on a negative trend. It is quite a disadvantage because it seem to be very prevalent in recent time.

The rate at which such information spread even when it can’t be easily verified,  students consume these information without even making reasonable effort to verify it’s authenticity.

10. Hacking: Cyber phishing and system interruptions is also another major disadvantage of social media used by students as it exposes the students to online hackers and fraudsters who are out there with malicious intent to take undue advantage of such student with vulnerable exposure on the cyber space.

It is quite regrettable as the level of security system on some of these social media sites are not strong enough to ensure privacy for students using the platforms.

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In conclusion, while there are numerous disadvantages of Social Media to students, its advantages seem to outweigh its disadvantages. I therefore submit and urge students to be disciplined and courteous in their use of Social Media. This way they will be able to maximize the benefits of social media rather than fall prey to its disadvantages.

Edeh Samuel Chukwuemeka ACMC

Edeh Samuel Chukwuemeka, ACMC, is a lawyer and a certified mediator/conciliator in Nigeria. He is also a developer with knowledge in various programming languages. Samuel is determined to leverage his skills in technology, SEO, and legal practice to revolutionize the legal profession worldwide by creating web and mobile applications that simplify legal research. Sam is also passionate about educating and providing valuable information to people.