Research Gateway

Abstract

Introduction: Within the past decade or so, social media such as Twitter, Facebook, MySpace, YouTube, Flickr, Yahoo Messenger, LinkedIn, Whats app messenger, Skype, Google talk, Google Messenger and others have grown at a very fast pace. As per a statistics report from a website statista.com, there are 2.6 billion social media users in the world as compared to around 1 billion users in the year 2010. It is expected that the number of social media users will cross 3 billion by 2021. This report also claims that of the total internet users, 71% are social media users and Facebook is the leader in social media applications with 1.86 billion active users. Social media have inevitably become an integral part of the contemporary classroom, of advertising and public relations industries, of political campaigning, and of numerous other aspects of our daily existence. This research paper presents the both negative and positive sides of the effects of social media on students and their academic performance.