Social networking in Bangladesh: Boon or curse for academic engagement?

Abstract

The number of social networking services (SNSs) users in Bangladesh is increasing at an accelerating rate. There are many who argue that SNS usage is destroying the students’ future by diminishing their academic engagement. The authors aim to investigate whether there is any relationship between students’ academic performance and their SNS usage. The study chose Facebook as a representative of SNSs because this is the most popular platform for online social connectivity and conducted a survey regarding the usage of Facebook among students of Business Administration from three private Bangladeshi private universities. The research results show that Facebook can be used for at least 21 academic tasks or goals and that these can be grouped into six major factors. Moreover, students opine that their online socializing does not reduce their study time, instead it helps them get the latest study related information, sharing courses, class schedules etc. After running a regression analysis, the authors conclude that the students’ level of engagement with the academic life through Facebook does not influence their academic results. The reason for this insignificant relation between academic results and academic engagement through SNSs may be due to the non-diversified course curriculum, the traditional way of delivering lectures and evaluating, limited study materials, non-receptiveness to technology-based learning etc. However, the authors propose to include SNSs as a study tool as it is a popular media and to conduct further research to better understand the effective way of using it in the education system.

Influence of New Media on University Students: Merits, Pitfalls and Preventions

“…This is attributed to the use of different networking sites, internet connectivity in mobile devices and a lot of information platforms which can be simultaneously used for information gaining to sharing. This finding is in agreement with scholars like (Bragdon & Dowler, 2016;Mouri & Arshad, 2016) who have advocated for the use of Facebook, Twitter and WhatsApp for communication purpose only but has moved further with creating e-knowledge society and real time information sharing.…”

Effect of Online Social Networking Sites Usage on Academic Performance of University Students in Uganda

“…Social media supports a more reflective approach to learning but also offer the opportunity to make teaching more practical and application-oriented [46]. [22]Investigated the influence of OSN and concluded that online socializing does not reduce students study time, instead it helps them to get the latest study related information, share course and class schedules.…”

“…There is an ongoing debate as to whether the use of OSN among students improves academic performance of user students or not does persist [20][21][22]57]. On one hand, OSN is seen to improve academic performance of student users [22,46,58] while on the other it does negatively impact on academic performance [20,51,56,59].…”

“…On one hand, OSN is seen to improve academic performance of student users [22,46,58] while on the other it does negatively impact on academic performance [20,51,56,59]. Aside from the ensuing arguments, [60]found that the reverse is the case, i.e.…”

“…Consensus on whether the use of online social networking (OSN) among students improves academic performance of user students or not is yet to be arrived at [20][21][22]The purpose of this study was, therefore, to investigate the effect of online social networking usage on student academic performance among university students in Uganda; specifically to assess the direct effect of OSNS usage and study the indirect effect on academic performance; basing on student general characteristics and, whether this be the case with upperclassmen (people who spend significantly more time using technology for academic and work-related purposes) or underclassmen (people who spend significantly more time using technology for non-academic purposes), student time management ability, student major (arts or sciences) and student preferred mode of learning (using traditional, hybrid or online).…”