Lastly, social media sets a boundary in creating new ideas.

Social media has now become an

acceptable platform for students to showcase their self-made projects. Even some teachers give

tasks that require a certain number of likes that corresponds a grade for the “audience impact”

part of the project. As these things become rampant in the education field nowadays, there is a

possibility that students just become complacent, thinking that these unreliable information from

social media can be used, as it is now an acceptable platform for the education industry. When

these information are cited in an incorrect manner, the problem seeps in — Plagiarism caused by

distraction and laziness to study. This has been an issue in the earlier years when the use of

internet in education and research purposes hasn’t been regulated, and the correct way to cite

sources hasn’t been introduced widely. It just doesn’t stop there - until now, it is still a

significant problem, not because not a lot of people are educated about it, but the culture of

social media that encourages being complacent as it is a casual networking platform affects the

thinking of the students. Since there are no definite owners of information presented as users in

these networking site don’t necessarily follow the proper citing process (since it is a casual,

familiar site that was first introduced as a site meant for casual socializing and meeting old

friends); the students as mentioned before, adapt and get influenced by this culture. Another

issue linked with this “No fresh ideas”. As these sites are now acceptable platforms to raise

awareness or simply get attention for education purposes, and that a quite of teachers even

incorporate social media in activities for their subject, there is a possibility that as more teachers

use it as a platform and a means of passing a project, there is also more probability of reaping

redundant ideas or producing projects that has been done before by other students. As more

videos or projects are uploaded for everyone to see, it would be easy to use the posted projects as
a comparison or even inspiration by other students doing the same project, and owners don’t

even have the right to complain if it’s completely copied since as stated in the privacy policy,

once it is posted on a social media site, it can be labelled or regarded as that site’s property.

Social media sets a boundary in creating new ideas in the way of promoting the wrong way to

study — encouraging the idea of studying “harder” rather than studying “smarter”. With the rise

of a lot of social media sites, and as more accounts get created in these sites, there is a significant

growth in the amount of information and data selection. This may be interpreted in a way that we

have more access to new knowledge about technological advances and other topics, but it can

also mean that there is a possibility of mishandling or misuse of the newly acquired data. As a

student, we are often tasked to do research that are of different types, and in this era of

globalization, the broadest to the more specific topics are made available for everyone to be

informed of. Since that idea has been presented not only to students, but teacher and adults as

well. Due to this, more workloads are given to students due to the assumed fact that nowadays,

we are privileged to have this much access to new learnings and relevant information. It is

always good to discover something new, but at times it only gives workloads to students that

they do not need to have to learn more and be sharper individuals. Rather than thinking out of the

box, looking for more ways to obtain data, they are encouraged to mostly depend solely on broad

researches — and gives them more time in the four walls of the classroom, not being able to take

into account that some lessons are best learned through experience and observation outside the

classroom. This idea encourages students to be book-smart, studying harder and relying solely on

definitions and interpreting it as “understanding” a lesson, rather than someone with street
smarts, that doesn’t only have book knowledge, but also has experience that contributes to their

understanding about topics being raised in the classroom.

Because of social media, the education system became more like a mold with one shape,

only producing individuals in a standard way. It affects their study habits, which in turn affects

their overall academic performance. Students tend to settle for mediocrity to be able to cope up

with the system, rather than being able to take a risk and actually learn more in the process —

being molded into their own personas, with their own identity, being the best that they can be.