Name : Silvia Wulandari

Class : A
NPM : 182122027

Discussion Essay

Issue : Social Media Usage in Education: The Pros and Cons

Pros :
- Eases the learning process
- Helps students keep up to date with the current information
Cons :
- Distracts the learning process
- Spreads false information quickly
Conclusion : Social media can either be a boon or bane in education usage. It is in the hands
of the users, in this case students as to how they decide to use it.
 Social Media Usage in Education: The Pros and Cons

A Discussion Essay
By
Silvia Wulandari
182122027@student.unsil.ac.id

Social media has taken the world's control. It has become one of the best devices for
information sharing and knowledge used by people nowadays. Social media (SM) has become
part and parcel of our everyday life that it is challenging to entirely refrain from it (Jayakumarn,
R., Tamilselvan, N., 2018). The tremendous growth of social media makes it is used in the
education field as both teachers and students mostly use it in their daily lives. However, social
media usage for students has two sides, like a coin. It has advantages such as eases the learning
process and - helps students keep up to date with the current information, and there are also
disadvantages such as distracts the learning process and spreads false information quickly.
Therefore, this essay will discuss both sides whether social media is good or not to be used in the
education field, especially for students.
In classroom activity, some students might have difficulty expressing their thoughts.
When social media is used in pedagogy, those students can get involved in the learning process
as its first advantage to ease the learning process. As well as that, social media platforms can
function as a comprehensive study tool for students. They can use them to find out the answers to
difficult questions by asking their online friends or someone's help. It also makes the learning
process more accessible for group discussions and study groups, for instance, the use of social
media platform Edmodo which allows the teacher to create and manage the online classroom
community, as well as student stay connected with their classmates and teacher anywhere and
anytime (Konchan, C. 2013).
Another essential advantage is that social media helps students keep up to date with the
current information. We all have to realize that this is the age of accelerated technological
progressions. When students use social media, they espouse the world's latest information right
in their fingertips. They easily to find out about what is going on in their neighborhood, school,
state, country, and even the entire world. It is an essential way to provide themselves with
sufficient knowledge of current affairs which empowers them to make informed decisions based
on what they acknowledge.
There are, however, some disadvantages of social media usage for students in education
which must be considered, the most notable of which is it also a distraction for some students
while the learning process. Students may be distracted from their school activity, and the
teachers will have no chance of knowing which student pays attention to the learning activity.
There is always a possibility that the students will not use social media for educational purposes
but only for their personal use. Andersson et al. (2014) found that students use social media in
extracurricular activities was found to be distractive to learning, especially among weaker
students. Finally, students were less willing to appropriate social media as a formal learning tool,
preferring it for course-related communication (Prescott, Wilson, and Beckett 2013) or using it
largely for socializing and non-academic purposes (Selwyn 2009).
Aside from helping students keep up to date with the current information, social media
also straightforward to spread false information which can lead to disclosing too much
information. Social media has a way of making students disclose much information that they
would not expose face to face. According to intent, false information can be categorized as
misinformation, which is created without the intent to mislead, and disinformation, which is
created with the intent of misleading and deceiving the reader (Hernon Peter (1995). Fallis, Don
(2014). As false information spreads quickly on social media, unwise students might be
misleading and might mislead others. So, false information might spread widely without
consciousness.
In short, social media has some clear advantages including eases the learning process and
helps students to keep up to date with the current information. At the same time there are certain
disadvantages as well including distracts learning process and spreads false infromation. In other
word, social media can either be a boon or bane in education usage. It is in the hands of the
users, in this case students as to how they decide to use it. Therefore, both teachers and students
have to understand on how to use it productively and responsibly.

References

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International Journal of Library & Information Science (IJLIS) Volume 7, Issue 1, Jan–Feb
2018, pp. 71–81, Article ID: IJLIS_07_01_010

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Kongchan, C. (2013). How Edmodo and Google Docs can Change Traditional Classrooms. In
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