Before the rise of social media, having a social life meant going out and interacting with people. However, with the growth of social media, it translated into having friends on Facebook. With a rise in competition in academics, parents’ expectations has risen. When students fail to meet expectations, social media is blamed. It has silently taken the blame for ruining students’ grades. However, every coin has two sides. Here is what’s good about social media.
‘Group’ studies: Messaging applications now have a feature — ‘group’ — through which people can converse with each other at the same time and the messages will be visible to participants of the group, unlike personal chats. Instead of going to each other’s house to study, students create a group through which they study together.
There are many applications which also provide video conference call dacility, which further saves time. . With the help of video conferencing, many coaching institutes also run their centres. The teacher chooses a centre where he or she teaches, while live streaming is also done. This helps students to learn from the best despite living in different cities.
Voice notes: Students can record their material and send it to the receiver who can listen to it without any additional charges. “My friends and I have a poetry reading group where we compose poems. Instead of typing it out, we recite it, which helps us in understanding the tone of the poem,” says Vidya Malhotra, a budding poet.
Wi-Fi calls: Youngsters use this service differently way. College students are always complaining of low recharge balance in their phones, therefore, free Wi-Fi calls come as a blessing.
“What we do is, we use messaging apps which allow us to make conference calls through Wi-Fi networks. This way, we revise our syllabus without having to pay for anything,” says Atasi Jain, a final year student B.Tech-CSE student, DITM College.
Attachments: Students are able to exchange images of notes that are important. This way, teachers’ work is also made easier as he or she can provide the information to one student who can pass it down to the whole class,or create a group.
Students also share videos for explaining concepts. “In paintings, we can’t explain the steps. Recording videos and sending them to each other gives us a better understanding of the process,” says Sahil Chhabra, an aspiring artist and a Class XII student.
“Often, I end up missing lectures. My friends who attend the morning lectures record and share them with me through WhatsApp or Hike,” says Aayush Nassa, Chemical Engineering, final year, Thapar University.
Surfing: Facebook helps students by providing them information about current topics in the form of articles or images. Twitter allows students to get opinions on various issues from eminent personalities. Through Quora, people can get quick answers to their questions. YouTube helps students to search information in the form of videos.
“I like experimenting. I started by making a working model of volcano and now, a model of a cordless door alarm. I have watched videos made by Indians as well as foreigners. This would not have been possible in the absence of technology,” says Dhruv Chhabra, a class IX student.
“I want to grow up and become a judge. I am too young to join classes for it. So I search on google and read related material which helps me,” he adds.
