If Facebook were a country, it would be the third largest in the world. Have you ever

wondered the influence of the social networking? In past few days, most people use social

networking to contact and see each other without need to meet them individually. It makes us

socialize and get many new friends even to stronger the bonds that had been made with the

others. Allah says in the Quran:

“O mankind, indeed we have created you from male and female and made you peoples and tribes

that you may know one another.”  [4:13]

It has given us many advantages and made our lives become simpler. Many college students

could not imagine a day without updating their Twitter feeds or Facebook status. However, did

you know that social networking brings more harm compared to the benefit tothe college

students?

According to a recent study led by researchers at the Miriam Hospital, using social

media may impair academic performance to college students. Nowadays, college students

prefer to find information using the internet because it is simpler and not wasting their time.

However, once they started to connect with internet, they will always end up with checking

facebook status, chatting on whatsapp, posting picture on instagram and many more. Lastly,

they will forget about the information and the things they just have learned because of spending

their time on the social networking. According to a Nielsen Media Research study, in June 2010,

almost 25 percent of students’ time on the Internet is now spent on social networking websites

(Jacobsen & Forste, 2011). Social networking makes the students spend most of their time on it

and least on studying. This is the reasons why spending times on something opposites studying

affect on academic.Hence, educators need to concern about these problems and try to find the

better ways to solve these problems.

Furthermore, social networking enables the spread of unreliable and false information.

Nearly half of all Asians get some form of local news on a mobile device, and 46 percent of

people get their news online at least three times a week. Eventhough it can help to spread

information faster, it does not always true because the informer is not usually comes from

people who have enough experience in reporters and journalism. Anybody can make the news

and spread it without we even know whether it is a true or false statement.  On September 5,

2012 false rumors of fires, shootouts, and caravans of gunmen in a Mexico City suburb spread

via Twitter and Facebook caused panic, flooded the local police department with over 3,000

phone calls and temporarily closed schools. This news shown us that we cannot believe 100 %

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of the news and information received in social network. Everyone should take responsibility by

avoiding the spreading of unreliable and false information on social media. Police also can take

action on the people that spread false rumors.

Social networking sites also entice people to their waste time. When alerted to a new

social networking site activity, like a new tweet or Facebook message, users take 20 to 25

minutes on average to return to the original task. In 30% of cases, it took two hours to fully

return attention to the original task. Besides, once we open our smartphone, it takes many of

our time to check on the media social even we just want to know what time is it. It just like

something that we cannot run away from and maybe it is more important than our boyfriend or

girlfriend. There are many more good things that we can dobesides ‘dating’ with your

smartphone like going out with friends or having a picnic. It just people nowadays did not see

these things or they just too lazy to see it in different angle and perspectives.

Other than that, social networking sites facilitate cyber bullying among college students.

Cyber bullying involves bullying through e-mail, instant messaging (IM), text and video

messages sent using cellular phones, web pages, web logs (blogs), chat rooms or discussion

groups, and other information communication technologies (Patchin & Hinduja, 2006). Cyber

bullying is a serious problem because it involves individual’s psychology and mental which can

effects person’s lifestyle. Person who have been bullied always tend to become stress and

shame to face other people. Person who spends more timeonline may become more vulnerable

targets than person who are infrequently online.In one study, college students who spent more

time online, engaged in more risky behaviors and were harassed online more often than their

friends who spent less time online (Slovak & Singer, 2011). Parents should aware about cyber

bullying because it is likely happen to youth like high schools and college students.

Besides, social networking sites affect our health tremendously. It is really true that when

all you do is just sitting in front of computer all day and doing not even one exercise. Statistics

show that sitting in front of the computer all day causes poor posture, eye strain, poor

circulation, and causes individuals to eat way too much, severely affecting one’s health. An

epidemiological survey in Asia revealed that college students fulfilling criteria of IA scored higher

in the Global Severity Index of the Symptom-Checklist 90R (SCL-90R) than a reference group

that made regular use of the internet but did not show signs of IA. IA was related to elevated

depression scores, measured with the Beck Depression Inventory (BDI). There are too many

bad effects that will happen if we just sit down and doing nothing. Our bodies need to do some

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exercise to maintain our health. Even the government encourages Malaysian to do exercise

three times per week for half hour. The benefit of exercise is that it can help normalize your

glucose, insulin, and leptin levels by optimizing insulin/leptin receptor sensitivity and lead to the

most important factor for optimizing our overall health and preventing chronic disease.

As conclusion, we must use social network wisely. “Even if you’re on the right track,

you’ll get run over if you just sit there.” The quotes reminds us to never feel save because

everything we do, we must cautious to follow the right track. Even social networking has many

advantages to college students, but it also has the disadvantages. Totally, there are many bad

effects if we didn’t use the social networking properly. It is not wrong to get into social

networking, but we need to do it right and save. “If not us to do the things right, then everyone

will do it wrong, if not us to do it now, then everyone will never get to do it”. All of us must

change our usually habits on using the social networking to the good habits. Only then, we can

have the better lifestyles for our future generations.

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