Social media is specifically designed for exchanging information, sharing pleasantries, having fun, and other systems that can be easy for people around the world. However, surveys show that students from secondary and tertiary institutions consider social media platforms quite usable despite its negative effects.
Poor academic performance is the major negative impact of social media on students. In some developed countries, gadgets can be used as an item of learning or research about certain complex topics and it was accepted by the bodies of education before the coming of social media platforms which made many students keen on using it.
Also, the excessive use of social media leads to poor academic performance where a student will only focus on one side and ignore the other without realizing the effect.
Similarly, social media has been the biggest Item that steals attention and concentration of students from learning. Likewise, many of the students with addiction to social media lack proper concentration during lectures, theatre, seminars, or practicals, and that leads to failure or hard understanding of one’s subject matter on studies.
Social media can cause mental or brain pressure for any student who is addicted to it. Therefore, as a result of mental pressure, a student may be drowning and this causes a serious problem to the student’s performance.
However, social media can be useful in some other ways but using it more often while on studies can also create more obstacles to the academic life of a student. It’s obvious that one of the horrible impacts of social media on the student is failure. Failure has various meanings but it affects one’s dream or future and annihilates everything and leaves nothing rather than regret.
Statistics has proven that most of the students with social media addiction, especially when they are in an academic environment, used to fail. Thus, social media would have caused enormous failures to academic programmes; this is a big mistake for any student and is the lesson that every wise hates to learn.
Also, the use of social media has caused many students to be rusticated or spent eight years for a four-year course in the university; students should limit the use of social media. Some bad lecturers take advantage of lack of attentiveness of students to demand sex-for-grade from female students in order to pass her examination; it’s crystal clear that the excessive use of social is behind this menace.
Therefore, it’s of paramount importance for students to know the implications of social media. This will help in achieving their goals and even graduate with first class or top-notch distinction.
Inuwa Muhammad Goje,
Department of Mass Communication,
University of Maiduguri
