Social networking is an interactive platform for communicating or exchanging information with people across the world. It is deeply revolutionized the way individuals communicate with one another. As a result of industrialization and modernization, the 21st century had provided loads of innovation. The utilization of social networking may be an outstanding characteristic of technological progress and has become one of the most necessary tools in people's daily lives. Social networking platforms like Twitter, Snapchat, Instagram, and LinkedIn include sharing stories and videos and using applications and electronic communication to connect with others. Most educators in most higher education institutions support technological developments wherever access to numerous-to-many instead of simply one-to-many Internet connectivity is suitable for user activities. Thus, social networking at the university level is of great use to students. When examining its overall facilities, such networks, when compared to their negative effects, still provides academic benefits.
Firstly, according to numerous studies, the key advantage of social networking for educational purposes is that it facilitates learning. As Ellis (2001) has mentioned, the positive aspect of online interaction among teachers and peers contains numerous facts, such as accessibility to peer and expert information, the ability to collect feedback from teachers and peers, and also the opportunity to focus on the communications shared. Learning is becoming more important for the students as educators use social networking as an appropriate learning tool and the connections between academics and their pupils have increased. Students acquire critical thinking skills along with self-reflection and knowledge and purpose-building skills by expressing their views, debating, and challenging the ideas of others, and working together against a group solution to a given problem. Around the same time, creating new skills and knowledge and being perceived as happening in a civilized way as each student can at any time access online information from various sources. To conclude, social networking facilitates learning for students as it has access to online books from various sites that are easily available to anyone, and this platform facilitates communication between teachers and students.
A further point is that using social networking enables the development of new university-level friendships and relationships. Like other social networks, Facebook improves learning through interrelation, interaction, social connection, and involvement. Many social networks, such as Friendster and Myspace, empower users to introduce themselves, express their social networks, and interact with others. Such platforms can also be employment-related, such as LinkedIn, relationship initiation, such as Friendster, or connecting those who have common interests like music, such as Myspace. Social media in the education sector gives a student the opportunity to interact with other students and educators. Scholars applaud tools of networking for their ability to recruit, inspire and support students in substantive communicative action, sharing of knowledge, and collaboration. “Students could benefit from chatting to gain knowledge with other students, teachers, and outside sources” (Jain et al., 2012). To conclude, digital technology helps students to improve their satisfaction with their studies and it benefits them to reduce their stress.
Additionally, one of the factors that have led to students’ use of social networking is flexible learning. As Collis (2001) has stated, flexibility is among the most appealing characteristics of social networking learning. Flexible learning extends learners’ decisions about what, where, where, and how to know. This promotes various learning styles, such as e-learning. Blended strategies incorporating face-to-face and online education are preferred to online teaching alone. Face-to-face lessons are likely to provide high levels of emotional comprehension, whereas online function accessibility and versatility will inspire students to achieve academic activities. As stated by Cheong (2002), “This leads to the different points of view of the students, forums including chat rooms which occur in social networking offer possibilities for the exchange of ideas on subjects, which enhances the chances to take advantage of opinions and ideas and their alignment with the students’ views, and helps to build a strong foundation for students in their information intent”. The concepts of learning affirm that interaction is an important element of the educational process.
However, social networking has a detrimental effect on a student's education if it generates dependency and disturbance. Like with many websites, students are persuaded to deny their learning and study times preferably to communicate with friends online. With Facebook and Twitter, many learners are now hooked to the online rave of the time. Today several learners and youths have social media accounts. It might not be improbable that a ward is performing poorly in school. Olubiyi (2012) noted: “Students are so immersed in social media these days that they are almost 24 hours online. Even during classes, it was witnessed that although lectures are on, some students are always busy pinging or Facebooking”. Times which should be channeled into studying, research, and creativity were overshadowed by the desire to meet new online friends and most of the time they are busy investigating trivial issues. Therefore, because of distraction from social media, most students’ academics endure setbacks. It has been noted that using these sites also influences the use of English and grammar by the students. In their online forums, the learners are used to writing short forms of words; they forget and use the same in classrooms. They are using things like '4' instead of 'for', 'U' rather than 'you', 'D' instead of 'the', etc. and this might negatively impact their class evaluation.
Nonetheless, social networking sites like Facebook and Instagram are linked to the connection between concerns regarding privacy and online behavior. Studies have demonstrated that users can raise very strong concerns about the protection of their private information, but are less than cautious about preserving it. While much of the demand for information on social media by individuals is involuntary, users are increasingly more confident with showing a huge amount of information online. Thus, one of the main concerns for users who are registered on these platforms is privacy. Privacy is one of the obstacles facing the use of social networking in education.
To conclude, it would be great to maintain that while online social networking utilization has both advantages, as it will facilitate learning and make it more flexible and it can even create new relationships and friendships, there are also disadvantages, such as lack of privacy, dependency, and disturbance. It will remain the most powerful tool in higher education to boost learning without any boundaries as the world is shifting significantly towards technology due to modernization. If learners are aware of the consequences of planning their time, participating more effectively in their studies, and then using their common sense, they will not face any disadvantages in meeting the demands of learning through social networking sites. Institutes also include a primary role to play in encouraging younger people's effective and ethical use of the Internet with a view to promoting learning. Therefore, the technology and social networking platforms in specific need to be supported by a solid pedagogical approach and try to produce the desired educational benefits.