Facebook and Myspace, what excellent means of keeping in touch with friends and family. The use of social networking sites has begun with only for college students, but has trickled down to where even elementary students are using the sites. Social networking sites help students keep in touch with friends, especially if they are too far apart to just drive and meet. But are such sites addicting and distracting? Although social networking sites allow the simple and convenient communication between friends, are we, as students who use such sites, getting a little carried away?
Many students are constantly on Facebook and MySpace, even during class. According to Andy Guess in his article in Inside Higher Ed, "Arizona State survey was administered in September over the Web to all freshmen in the university's campus residence halls; about 21 percent responded. Asked whether they use a social networking site, 93.2 percent said they do actively, 4 percent had in the past and 2.8 said never. For Facebook, the percentage of active users is 88.6, compared to 3.4 former users and 8.1 percent who said they have never used it." Now the question is whether universities should take the step to integrate popular social networking sites into the school system. Integrating campuses with social networking sites by possibly giving students more resources to help them better adapt themselves with the new life ahead of them. Guess says, " When probed for more college-sanctioned uses of Facebook, the researchers found that 68.3 percent of respondents had joined a group for their residence halls on Facebook (35.3 percent did so on MySpace).” Is it possible for universities to fully integrate social networking sites to their curriculum? If this were to happen, students would be overwhelmingly tempted to click on the “social” part of these networks and thus, get distracted.
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