SOCIAL NETWORKING SITES IN HIGHER EDUCATION: POTENTIAL BENEFITS AND DRAWBACKS

Recently, social media, particularly social networking sites such as Facebook, belong to the daily reality of most university students. We target social networks from an educational point of view, pointing to their potential educational value; and hence, the proposed theoretical paper aims to summarize potential positive and negative implications of social networking sites (mainly Facebook) for higher education. The meta-analytic approach to the relevant research dealing with social networks in higher education enabled us to create inventories of potential benefits and drawbacks of social networking sites for the tertiary level of education. Among other positives, Facebook has the ability to substitute course management systems. The negatives include a significant negative correlation between time spent on Facebook and academic performance. In conclusion, the reviewed research on social networking in higher education proposes mixed results, although a slight majority of authors report positive impacts of social networks.