The Perceived Effects of Social Media to Student’s Social Behavior

John Stephen Kong

Virnel Mari Detalla

Renz Mitzi Mae Malaubang

Contact Number: 09122914351/ johnstephenvkong01@gmail.com

Social media has become pervasive, impacting the social fabric of our society and changing the
nature of social relationships. It is a broad concept covering a range of Internet applications that
support social communication between people. New technologies help ease and give flexibility
in communicating and sharing of resources. This new approach to consuming and creating
information is in particular attractive to youths as a platform and space for activities not possible
in the face-to-face context (Leea et al., 2015).

Students use social media tools for many purposes such as access to information, group
discussion, resource sharing and entertainment (Wanget al., 2011). This has generated
speculation on their use and related positive and negative implications, in both the short and long
terms. As several studies demonstrate, social media interaction could have positive and negative
effects on students.

Socialization is very important, but not the other way around. Socializing in person is different
from socializing people using the social media.

Socializing on new media platforms is much more ordinary than advertisers allow. Long-time
youth media researcher David Buckingham (2008) stresses that young adults employ new
digital media mostly for "mundane forms of communication and information retrieval (Mizuko
Ito., 2010) reports that young adults mainly "hang out," "mess around," and "geek out" online.
Throughout developed countries, studies confirm that the majority of young people's online
activity is spent in casual socialization: "Over half their time on computers is spent
communicating with other people" (Ofcom, 2013, para. 7)

The evolution of social media has led to its use as the best medium for communication.
Whereby, two-thirds of the world’s internet population visit social networking or blogging sites,
thus serving as a communication and connection tool. Social networking sites (SNSs) are online
Communities of Internet users who want to communicate with other users about areas of mutual
interest, whether from a personal, business or academic perspective.
 The popularity and use of social networking websites (SNWs) is rapidly increasing with these
sites fast becoming one of the communication mediums of preference for young people.
Research suggests that SNW use may increase adolescents’ self-esteem and well-being if the
tone of the feedback provided by viewers of their profiles is positive, but decrease self-esteem
when the feedback is negative. As with any type of excessive internet use, overuse of SNWs has
the potential to impact negatively on an individual’s study, work, health, and personal
relationships. Young adults are more likely than any other age group to have a SNW and engage
in higher levels of use (almost 3 hours per day). Despite the increasing popularity of SNWs,
however, there is still little known about the psychosocial variables that predict people’s level of
use.

The consequences of such social detachment are usually not taken into account in policy making
circles, even though it is well documented in the sociology and psychology literature that
students' social circles are important for socializing and overall development (Wentzel et al.,
1993)