By Alishba Niamat 

The utmost common question among the people,” Is social media truly valuable for supporting learning successfully or is it just a distraction?” Social media invented in the craving for the expression of single identity and sustaining an online social life, not one of education or supporting learning.  As before some years, we would have told our students to switch off their mobile phones as they arrived into class. But now we might say them to their devices on and approach social media. Researchers also struggle with the influence of social media in an academic context, students are frequently unclear about how and when they should be using social media.

Now social media deliver the educational framework with tools that support the building of groups of practice. The growth of a learning group alone may bring about major positive influences on a student’s learning experience without the need for specific and discrete social media learning experiences. Facebook is the most mutual medium due to the number of students already engaging in this social space. There is simply a series of aspects that may influence that value of using social media. By presenting these aspects I would invite readers to study how social media may influence student engagement with learning.

Social media kills valuable time: There is no doubt that social media is very powerful and has changed our lives. Yet, it is taking lots of our valuable time by posting or running ads on, facebook, linked in etc. Time is one asset with us which will never come back. Time occupied engaging with social media for the execution of learning activity can be a noteworthy factor. Investment in time is the demand to be able to explain oneself with social media technology. While planning a learning activity, instructors assume that students to devote a certain amount of time engaged with learning activities.  The insertion of social media as a learning tool may improve that time on task by more effectively engaging learners. Every individual should make a personal decision about the right level of effective engagement in link with what they want to achieve. 

Social media is an exterior distraction: Social media is normally perceived as a distraction which quickly distracts users away from their original task and taking the user into a number of unfruitful channels.  As students open online services they will quickly get addicted to following the latest trending topic and be distracted away from their learning activists. Without attention and planning, it can be difficult for students to stay on task while they online on social media.

 Social media has also been carped as providing only exterior interaction and engagement.certainly social media services such as Twitter are fast moving and categorized by a limiting character limit. Currently, indication strongly supports the use of social media as a strong driving force for change in education .we need to positively support our students to develop the necessary digital capabilities to keep pace.