PASIG CITY, Philippines - I remember writing this in 2009 for my Korean student who was 2nd year high school in Colegio San Agustin Makati. Yeah, I did his homework. I had to make it look like his, though. :)
Technology changes rapidly. From the old-fashioned snail mails to the new and fast 3G video calls. Indeed, everyone is qualified to be called a geek. The computer savvy people come from all ages, from your neighbor’s youngest cousin to your grandmother. But most computer users are proven to be us—the youth (students). How do social networking sites affect the way students study?
Today, Friendster has more than 13 million active members in the Philippines. Friendster is also the country’s #1 social networking site. In Korea, people don’t really have Friendster or Facebook, because almost 25% percent of the South Korean population has Cyworld. And just like any other countries in the world, students are among the top users. In America, researchers surveyed 219 students at Ohio State, including 102 undergraduate students and 117 graduate students. Of the participants, 148 said they had a Facebook account.
An Indian student was killed because of posting a little something about him in a social network that is popular in India. This is perhaps an extreme example of the social impact of these social networking websites such as Facebook, Myspace and Friendster on today’s youth. So instead of asking a new friend his home address, we rather ask his Friendster’s URL or if he’s on Facebook.
Students’ attention is separated by two worlds – the real and the virtual. The real world is all about submitting projects, doing homework, passing tests and so on. While the virtual world is about giving friend requests, approving new comments, sharing photos and everything that is digitally connected. But which world is better? Which is much more fun to focus on?
Forgetting that they have Science test tomorrow, students chatted through Facebook’s walls. Their grades were affected and going down period by period. Because social networking sites are highly addictive, high school students who use Facebook spend less time studying and have lower grade point averages than students who have not signed up for the social networking website. This is according to a study conducted in the States.
The effects on students are really getting destructive on some points. They are addicted to the extent that their performance in the real world is negatively affected. The technology changes so fast, and so as the students’ future.
What can be the solution? How can we prevent students from being addicted? Should we really prevent them? Like locking personal computers up? Blocking networking sites to be accessed by any student? No matter how we try to stop them from accessing these sites, they would just keep on trying to log in. So, what should we do?
Keeping students away from computers isn’t a good solution. But bringing education attached to these sites is one of best ones.
A good way to start is by adding simple challenges to solve every time we click anything in a social networking site. If we want to approve a pending friend request, we must solve a simple Math question like 200-45= ? and if we get that right, we can approve the request right away. Instead of those Farmville, Restaurant City and Pet Society games that we play on Facebook, why don’t they replace them with Texttwist, hangman, Scrabble and other educational games?
Students may spend less time studying because they rather go on social networking sites. It’s hard to change this, and we couldn’t stop big sites from operating just because we want them to. So the best way to prevent destruction is not by killing them but by taming them, rather changing them into better sites.
Call Me Jed™ (cc) 2013. This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Philippines License.
 |
| © Okrest | Stock Free Images and Dreamstime Stock Photos |
Here is the short article:
Technology changes rapidly. From the old-fashioned snail mails to the new and fast 3G video calls. Indeed, everyone is qualified to be called a geek. The computer savvy people come from all ages, from your neighbor’s youngest cousin to your grandmother. But most computer users are proven to be us—the youth (students). How do social networking sites affect the way students study?
Today, Friendster has more than 13 million active members in the Philippines. Friendster is also the country’s #1 social networking site. In Korea, people don’t really have Friendster or Facebook, because almost 25% percent of the South Korean population has Cyworld. And just like any other countries in the world, students are among the top users. In America, researchers surveyed 219 students at Ohio State, including 102 undergraduate students and 117 graduate students. Of the participants, 148 said they had a Facebook account.
An Indian student was killed because of posting a little something about him in a social network that is popular in India. This is perhaps an extreme example of the social impact of these social networking websites such as Facebook, Myspace and Friendster on today’s youth. So instead of asking a new friend his home address, we rather ask his Friendster’s URL or if he’s on Facebook.
Students’ attention is separated by two worlds – the real and the virtual. The real world is all about submitting projects, doing homework, passing tests and so on. While the virtual world is about giving friend requests, approving new comments, sharing photos and everything that is digitally connected. But which world is better? Which is much more fun to focus on?
Forgetting that they have Science test tomorrow, students chatted through Facebook’s walls. Their grades were affected and going down period by period. Because social networking sites are highly addictive, high school students who use Facebook spend less time studying and have lower grade point averages than students who have not signed up for the social networking website. This is according to a study conducted in the States.
The effects on students are really getting destructive on some points. They are addicted to the extent that their performance in the real world is negatively affected. The technology changes so fast, and so as the students’ future.
What can be the solution? How can we prevent students from being addicted? Should we really prevent them? Like locking personal computers up? Blocking networking sites to be accessed by any student? No matter how we try to stop them from accessing these sites, they would just keep on trying to log in. So, what should we do?
Keeping students away from computers isn’t a good solution. But bringing education attached to these sites is one of best ones.
A good way to start is by adding simple challenges to solve every time we click anything in a social networking site. If we want to approve a pending friend request, we must solve a simple Math question like 200-45= ? and if we get that right, we can approve the request right away. Instead of those Farmville, Restaurant City and Pet Society games that we play on Facebook, why don’t they replace them with Texttwist, hangman, Scrabble and other educational games?
Students may spend less time studying because they rather go on social networking sites. It’s hard to change this, and we couldn’t stop big sites from operating just because we want them to. So the best way to prevent destruction is not by killing them but by taming them, rather changing them into better sites.
Call Me Jed™ (cc) 2013. This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Philippines License.