INFLUENCE OF SOCIAL MEDIA ON TERTIARY INSTITUTIONS' STUDENTS

Through email and instant messaging, chatting, online communities are created and users begin interact with each other for as long as they like. Different researchers in many fields has started to investigate the influence of social media site, the researchers are investigating how such site may play into issues of identity, privacy, social, youth culture and education life of the students in tertiary institutions.

Several websites are beginning to tap into the power of the social networking model for philanthropy. According to the British Report in 2011, HCL technologies conducted research that showed that 50% of British workers are banned from the use of social media during office hours. Bearing in mind that social media constitute a great deal of disturbance to the people. -www.Convinceandconvert.com

Facebook users topped all social media applications with over 955 million users in 2013, followed by Twitter with 500 million users.-from www.pewresearch.org/.../socialmedia.

 Such huge user base is comparable to countries. Social networks are becoming major tools for education, and entertainment. The human nature is keen on interacting with people and finding common areas and interests. In education, two streams are prevailing: the use of social networks as a tool supporting activities deemed important for the purpose of educational institutions, instructors, and students. The second stream is the bad influence social media inflicts on students behaviors and time management.

In this view, when one is chatting, the content of the message reveal a lot about an individual. In chatting, comments, photos, and status it should speak less of an individual. Putting it straight, beware that if you are mindful of what you are doing, you can maintain a measure of privacy on a social media. Most people don’t know how to relate using the social media; they post all information about themselves online, thereby revealing themselves to the world. Some information are supposed to be kept private but the anxiousness to connect to the world make students to put all their information online for people to see.

“When people go on social network they lose their mind”, Awake (2012). Moreover, you will agree with me that one of the ironies of the social media is that it keeps you away from the most important things. Social Media is a time-waster, no doubt about that. Imagine when a student arrives from the lecture room, picks up her phone and begin to view her phone and discover that a friend of his has just uploaded a picture, he will be so interested in the picture and will wish to view it. After viewing, he discovers that there are over 30 notifications waiting for him to view, after viewing all those notifications another messages comes in through Whatsapp then he minimizes to view and reply. After the reply, he develop intimacy with the person sending message then they continue all and on. In the process of doing all these, he has forgotten that an assignment was given in the class which will be submitted the next morning which also constitutes part of the continuous assessment (C.A). Though Social Media is a great way to stay connected with people but you just have to know when to shut it down.