Social Networking Argument

Social Networking in Education: Helpful or Hurtful? Social networking and social media have become a prominent way of communication. Websites such as Facebook and MySpace allow people from all over the world to communicate in a variety of ways. People use these websites for a variety of reasons: to find and gather information, communicate with instructors, and converse with peers. However, the use of social networking comes with certain drawbacks that cause some instructors to detest using social networking for anything academic. These drawbacks, such as it distracting students or giving inaccurate information, can be avoided by limiting the use of social networking in schools and monitoring its usage, which would improve on the beneficial features of social networking in education. Many people enjoy social networking because it allows them to stay in contact with friends and family across vast amounts of space. This allows people to pass information rapidly from across the globe. However, this information’s reliability could be suspect because of the source. The people exaggerate and falsify information that students could use for academic purposes. For example, if a student finds a comment about a presidential election, claiming that a presidential candidate supports gay rights, can the student know if the information is accurate? The student would need to find where this person attained this information, as well as if he or she can trust this person as a reliable source. For the most part, social networks do not provide source reliability information. To improve their usability, social networking sites could use forums that allow only certain people to comment about certain issues. This way students could use information from the forums to expand on their knowledge of certain issues. If the aforementioned post had been in one of these forums, the student could rely on the information because the comment came from an expert in the field.
Social networks

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