Impact of Social Media on Students: A Study of Kurukshetra University

INTRODUCTION

Social Media is the platform that gives individuals the opportunity to interact, using two way communications; anyone who has online accounts can share their opinions with other social media users. Social Networking has changed the way of everyone‘s life. It is a socially networked life. Social media has been mainly defined to refer to ―the many relatively inexpensive and widely accessible electronic tools that facilitate anyone to publish and access information, collaborate on a common effort, or build relationship‖. There are two types of social media users; digital natives and digital immigrants. Digital natives are the ones who were born after 1980; they came to this world when the digital media existed. However, digital immigrants are the ones who were born before 1980 and adapted their lives to digital media (AntonSon and Christopher, 2014). It has occupied an important place in our lives which is obvious from our habits of using social networking sites like face book, Whatsapp, Instragram, Youtube etc and also mentioning some on our visiting cards as well. Now a day‘s social media has been the important part of one‘s life from shopping to electronic mails, education and business tool. Social media plays a vital role in transforming people‘s life style. Social media includes social networking sites and blogs where people can easily connect with each other. Since the emergence of these social networking sites like Twitter and Facebook they act as key tools for news, journalists. The usage of these websites is increasing day by day. The evaporation of boundaries between friends and distant family, staying connected with family and friends at minimal cost, sharing your opinion is feature of today‘s life. People go on vacations and do parties and then post pictures on social media. As SNS are increasingly popular with millions of users connecting within and beyond the platform, it is important to understand the effects of SNS. Today, it is crucial to determine the impact of social media on the academic performance of students. Technology is booming rapidly from year to year, and the younger generations are the ones caught in this rapid change. Social media platforms vary from Web blogs, to micro-sharing platforms, to life streams to social networks and much more. A few of the platforms they use are Facebook, YouTube, whatsapp etc. The younger generation is the individuals that will lead our world in the future, they must be well educated to be able to impact this world. Therefore, research must be conducted about the different things they are exposed to, that may affect them negatively or positively. This research aims to assess the frequency at which the students are social networking, and whether it has any effect on their academic performance. If there is an impact on their academic performance, in what way does it affect it? All these questions will be answered through this research paper. Social media has been utilized in so many different ways throughout the years. This research aims at measuring the

LITERATURE REVIEW

Boyd and Nielsen (2006) reported that the top ten social networking sites developed with the passage of time, and its number of users increases from 46.8 million to 68.8 million. Lenhart & Madden (2007) studied that a huge amount of underage users who were accessing the social networking sites. It has been analyzed that 41% of 12–13 years old and 61% of 14–17 years old users use social networking websites. Kettle (2016) stated the usage of social media among students. It highlighted that more than 60% of students are spending four hours or more on social media a day. Facebook, Instagram, YouTube and Spotify are the most popular internet platforms accessed regularly. Naizabekov (2012) concluded that social media causes procrastination as a result of its distracting nature. An individual who uses social media take much more time than it would take a focused individual to finish a task. Through procrastination emerges the second negative impact, which is lack of motivation, because using social media with studying develops negative attitude towards their individual work at school. Rambe (2011) states that social media gives different drawbacks and opportunities that distinctively enable and disable possibilities of having face-to-face interaction, as it liberates them from this obligation to the availability of everything online. He also adds that Facebook as a learning environment has given the opportunity to have multiple representations of students voices and has created an educative and aesthetic space. But Facebook‘s learning environment has caused limitations of individuals to realize their self-interests. Lavy (2012) stated that if students are in contact with friends who share the same interests, goals and education on social media, then they are more likely to help each other in performing well in their studies, due to motivation and other factors. O‘Keeffe and Clarke-Pearson (2011) studied that one of the most important benefits of social media is that it enhances how an individual understands himself by engaging with others, and becoming creative through blogging. This leads to better outcomes in their individual school work. Social media gives students the opportunity to improve their learning, since they have the chance to share knowledge with one another and conduct group projects more efficiently. Kirschner and Karpinski (2010) discuss WimVeen‘s new term, ―Homo Zappiens‖, which refers to the learners of the new generation, and the new way they use to learn. This new way is known as ―meta-cognitive skills,‖ which means they learn on their own without the need for instructions, it is also called ―discover-based learning.‖ They also add that, the younger generation shares an unclear bond with technology since their birth, leading them to multi-task. They note that 46% of the younger generation who access the internet use it to help them with their school assignments. the information being published. Social media is also a platform that allows students to interact with one another, with their teachers and communities that share their same education.

PROBLEM SATEMENT

Here the study was conducted to find out the effect of social media on the education of youth, how exactly social media is effecting on youth in different angle of social life, political awareness, different religious practices, educational learning, trends adopting, sports activities and so on.

1. To learn the awareness level of usage of different social networking sites. 2. To check out the behavior of youth towards social media and find out the total hours‘ of time spend by youth on social media. 3. To check out the impact of social media on the education youth.

RESEARCH METHODOLOGY

This research aims to find the impact of social media on students. Research is based on primary data. Data has been collected through questionnaire. Standardized questionnaire is used. Sample is selected randomly. The sample consisted of 260 respondents but due to lack of responses 10 questioners were rejected. The sample is of 250 respondents out of which 133 respondents are male and 117 respondents are female. Questionnaires are distributed amongst a sample of students aged 18-27. The techniques used for data analysis are descriptive statistic, cross tabulation, Cronbach alpha.

The following discuss shows the major findings of the present study:

Form the above table it is clear that out of 250 students, 99 students are member of 3-6 social networking sites out of which 44 are males & 55 are females followed by 64 students who are the members of 6-9 social networking sites.

Out of 250 students, 146 students are of age group 21-24 followed by 94 students in age group of 18-21.

Out of 250 students, 133 students are using social networking sites for more than 4 years in which 58 are females & 75 are male students followed by 96 students who are using social networking sites from 1-4 years.

Out of 250 students, 147 students spend 1-5 hours daily on social networking sites in which 70 are females & 77 are male students followed by 56 students who are using social networking sites daily for less than 1 hour.

Out of 250 students, 87 students are having 100-300 friends on social networking sites in which 50 are females & 37 are male students followed by 67 students who have less than 100 friends on social networking sites.

Out of 250 students, 149 students do not add strangers in their friend list.

Out of 250 students, 51 students have been the victim of online bullying in which 27 are males and 24 are females.

Out of 250 students, parents of 211 students are aware of their social networking activities in which 107 are females and 104 are males.

Out of 250 students, 108 students agree that social networking sites have some effect on face to face communication in which 47 are females & 61 are male students followed by 87 students agree that

Out of 250 students, 147 students use social networking sites to keep in touch with family & friends in which 77 are females & 70 are male students.

Out of 250 students, 54 students use social networking sites to share their experience out of which 17 are females & 37 are males.

Out of 250 students, 43 students use social networking sites to keep in make professional contacts & 207 students do not use social networking sites to keep in make professional contacts.

Out of 250 students, 75 students use social networking sites to share pictures, videos or music & 175 students do not use social networking sites to share pictures, videos or music.

Out of 250 students, 39 students use social networking sites to keep in make new friends & 211 students do not use social networking sites to keep in make new friends.

Out of 250 students, 90 students post pictures or videos on their profile in time interval of 1 month followed by 87 students who post pictures or videos in time interval of 1 week to 1 month.

Out of 250 students, 197 students do not block their parents or relatives on social networking sites & 53 students block their parents or relatives on social networking sites.

As the technology is growing the social media has become the routine for each and every person, people are seen addicted with these technology every day. With different fields its impact is different on people. Social media has increased the quality and rate of collaboration for students. Youngsters are seen in contact with these media daily. Social media has various merits but it also has some demerits which affect people negatively. False information can lead the education system to failure, in an organization wrong advertisement will affect the productivity, social media can abuse the society by invading on people‘s privacy, some useless blogs can influence youth that can become violent and can take some inappropriate actions. It was evident that social media played a major role on behavior change of the respondents. The youths mostly used social media for communicating between their friends and families. The fact that social media is part of them especially having been born in this era of emerging technology, most felt that they could not do anything without it. They depend on it for various positive things such as research and contacts with old friends and getting on the loop of what is happening either in their circles, nationally or internationally. Use of social media is beneficial but should be used in a limited way without getting addicted.

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Research Scholar, Department of Commerce, Kurukshetra University, Kurukshetra