Perception of Graduate and Undergraduate Students in the Effective Utilization of Social Networking Sites

The study selected Facebook as a representative of Social Networking Sites because Facebook is the most popular platform for sharing opinions, views, and ideas. A lion share of daily time is spent on surfing Facebook by a large number of university students in Bangladesh. This study endeavors to focus on Facebook’s positive impacts on students’ lifestyle, education, social and economic life, and negative impacts on health and personal relationships. It also investigates whether Facebook could be an essential tool for e-learning or not. 150 students took part in the survey and data was collected through a set of questionnaire. During data analysis, both qualitative and quantitative methods were applied. This study significantly finds that students reflect a high positive opinion, a low negative attitude, and a moderate addiction on Facebook. The study also revealed that Facebook could be utilized to enhance their academic performance and help them get the latest study-related information, share materials, and encourage collaborative learning, group studies, and interaction. It is also found that excessive and imbalanced use of Facebook affects the students’ health and family life. The researcher will try to provide some recommendations for the users to harvest a healthy benefit by using Facebook in a balanced way. Keywords: Facebook, e-learning, positive and negative impact, health, graduate, undergraduate students DOI: 10.7176/JLLL/69-08 Publication date: June 30th 2020


Introduction
Social Networking Sites (SNSs) are connecting the planet in a way as no other generation has experienced before. The most acknowledged SNSs are Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, MySpace, IMO, Viber, Messenger, WhatsApp, Google +, Skype, YouTube, Academia.edu, and LinkedIn. The utility of those online sites among the students is turning out to be progressively acknowledged and trendy because these sites allow them to have access to information, group discussion, resource sharing, and amusement. However, SNSs have both positive and negative consequences on the students' academic and private life. By surveying students' utilization of Facebook as a specialized apparatus, we aspire to outline how students are currently incorporating Facebook into their variety of ordinary exercises.
More than 50% of the students use a social networking site several times to upload or download photos or videos, get information concerning their profession or educational work, chat with pals, watch movies, and do research (Sheldon,2008). While the students utilize these sites as a leisure time activity, it might harm their educational performance (Mingle & Adams, 2015). When they apply jargon language in the text messages, it affects their writing skills, spelling, and grammatical understanding (Mingle & Adams, 2015). Moreover, who uses it repeatedly may have more stomach aches, insomnia, uneasiness, gloominess, and isolation from real life (Larry D., 2011b). Additionally, excessive use and abuse of these sites cause moral corruption, mental disorders, and violent tendencies among the users (Larry D., 2011a). The University culture nurtures Facebook, hugs it, and has transformed the site into a standard of living rather than a pastime. The present study will mainly emphasize the usage of social networking sites and the visible positive and negative impact on the academic and the personal and social lives of the graduate and undergraduate students of Bangladesh.

Statement of Problem
The majority of the parents is worried about the increasing use of Facebook by their children and is confused whether their children are paying enough attention to their studies. This research is carried out to determine the impact of the use of the student's social networks on their study and overall life. For which reasons do Bangladeshi students use social media? Does the use of social media condense the amount of time the students dedicate to their education? Do social media have any positive contribution to the students' studies? These form the core problems this study seeks to investigate and explain steadily. This study has been designed to recognize how the excessive use of social media can affect university students' personal and social life. The result of this research optimistically will make awareness among university students accessing social media.
To achieve the goal of the study, the researcher has organized a survey with the help of the following core inquiries: at risk of harming themselves and others. Possible risks identified with the use of SNSs include risks of psychological disorders and health problems, i.e. social loneliness, anxiety, hopelessness, time mismanagement, poor eating habits, and lack of physical exercise; more significant short attention spans and threatened higherorder reasoning skills such as attention, determination, and analytical reasoning among frequent users of SNSs; a tendency to overvalue one's ability to multitask and manage projects; and technology being seen as a replacement for the analytical reasoning process (Brenner, 1997;Connolly, 2011;Kraut,Patterson, Lundmark, Kiesler, Mukophadhyay, & Scherlis, 1998;Rosen, 2011;Young, 1996;and Zwart, et al.,, 2011).
Previous researchers have appreciably dealt with and recognized diverse aspects of internet use in Bangladesh. Rahman, (2002) has assessed the internet and its access; Roknuzzaman (2006) has conducted an investigation on internet access in public university; Alam, Kabir, and Elizabeth (2006) have observed the execution and assessment of e-learning; Islam and Selim (2006) have scrutinized the existing status and visions for e-learning in the encouragement of higher education; Mohseni, Dowra and Haghighat(2008) have inspected whether the use of internet is making people socially cut off or not; Mostofa (2011) has scanned the access and use of internet among business students of a private university of Bangladesh; Mahmud (2011) has detected the private university student's approaches towards internet; But none of them have investigated the impacts of the use of SNS on Bangladeshi students' academic performance in any of their aforesaid studies; except, Asad, Mamun & Clement (2012) who have surveyed the effect of social networking sites to the lifestyles of teachers and students.
This research will shed light on the effective utilization of Facebook, as the representative of SNSs and its' impact on the social and economic, academic, personal and health life of graduate and undergraduate students of Bangladesh. d) The sample of the study was the graduate level (18-28 years old) students.

Research Methodology
e) The sample size was 150 students consisting of both male and female participants. Among that, 100 respondents are from the target group of 18-28 years old. The rest 50 respondents are more than 28 years old.
f) The study sample consists of 150 respondents from 4 colleges and universities of Cumilla district in Bangladesh, such as Comilla University, Lalmai Govt College, Comilla Victoria College, and Comilla Govt College.
g) A well-structured questionnaire was designed to gather data and information from the respondents. It was divided into five sections, such as Section 1, 2,3,4,5. Section 1 provided respondents' demographic information, such as age, gender, educational status. Section 2 contained the positive and negative impact on students' academic life. Section 3 and 4 included the questions whether SNSs have any impact on creating the social relationship, Section-5 analyzed the threats students' face from using Social Networking Sites and whether the use of Facebook is in the normal range or addiction level. The questionnaire is presented in Appendix 1.
h) The researcher created an online questionnaire and distributed it to the students of Cumilla district. The data was collected in Google docs. After the collection of data, the total responses were 200 and after the unnecessary data cleaning, there were useful 150 responses.
i) Both primary and secondary sources were Data. Primary data were collected through a questionnaire survey. Five point Likert scale was used to conduct the survey, where 1 stands for strongly agree/Always, 2 for agree/Often, 3 for neutral/Frequently, 4 for disagree/Occasionally, and 5 stands for strongly disagree/Rarely. Secondary data were collected from different websites, published articles in the journals, conference papers, and books.

Demographic Questionnaire
The questionnaire's opening was with demographical questions; the gender and the age of the respondents were asked. Data was collected impartial from both sex groups to make the study exemplary. There were 59.8% female Journal of Literature, Languages and Linguistics www.iiste.org ISSN 2422-8435 An International Peer-reviewed Journal Vol.69, 2020 68 and 40.2% male respondents. We get confirmation from the study that female students were more disturbed with social media than the male students. Age categorization of those engaged in the survey is from less than 18-yearold 0.9 %, 18 -21 years old 70.1%, 22 -25 years old 27.1% and above 1.9%.

Background knowledge about Performance of SNSs Users
The researcher used a close-ended questionnaire to find out data from teachers. The questionnaire was distributed to teachers of three universities (Comilla, Britannia, and National University). The teachers' questionnaires included 25 questions with fixed alternatives. a) Most Using Social Networking Sites The following figure will reveal the depicted portrayal of social media individuals in Bangladesh. The sample data were found by the study, which was done among 150 students. It shows the most using platform of social networking site . Fig 1shows that   The next question was whether they are known to Facebook and its' usage or not. 100% of the respondents answered that all of them use Facebook as one of their most favorable Social Networking Sites. The researcher analyzed the next question, where the undergraduate students are asked how long they have been using Facebook. Around 30.8% of respondents agreed that they are using Facebook as beginner-level users and started it just one or two years ago. Only 8.4% of respondents were using Facebook for more than seven years old. The respondents were asked how many hours do they spend on Facebook now, and the following pie chart shows the number of hours they spend on Facebook. Fig 5 illustrates  69 media for 1 to 2 hours per day. 37.4% uses 3 to 5 hours per day. 9.3%use it for 0-60 minutes. 4.7% use it for 6 to 7 hours, and the rest, 2.8 % use it for more than 8 hours.  (Table 1) To assess the level of addiction, users answered the following questions using this scale: 0 = Rarely/Strongly Disagree 2.5 = Occasionally/Disagree 5 = Frequently /Neutral 7.5 = Often /Agree 10 = Always/Strongly Agree After managing the questions and receiving answers, numbers were added for each response to get a final score.   If we analyze their behavior towards Facebook, we find that more than half of the respondents always struggled to cut down the use of Facebook. It was also found that 39.1% of the respondents agreed that they lose track of time while using Facebook. They attempt several times to cut down the excessive use of Facebook but fail to win over. In the next question, more than 50.4 % of respondents always or often get themselves distracting from family because of their excessive use of Facebook. It was also found that 45% of them always or often scroll Facebook to forget their problems. Instead of facing the problems to solve it in real life, they like to indulge in a virtual solution that is scrolling Facebook without any aim. They use Facebook as a means to avoid their issues. Along with distracting from family, 54% of the respondents opine that they always or often ignore household chores to spend more time on Facebook. 40% of them always or often think about login next time again. They cannot help but controlling time for using Facebook. It was also found that 59.4% of them generated the behavior of convincing themselves by saying "a few more minutes" to use Facebook for a more extended period. When social networking sites are not available, most of the respondents feel angry or suffer from depression and loneliness. The last question was whether the students feel addicted or not, then more than half of the responds strongly agreed that they always or often prefer to socialize on Facebook than meeting them in real life.

Reasons for Using Social Media (Facebook) by Tertiary Level Student
On the other hand, figure-5 indicates the motives of using social media, especially Facebook, by Tertiary level students of Bangladesh. According to the data, 59.8% of the users' community used social media for getting relevant documents regarding their education and, 46.1 % used it for getting enjoyments, chatting with virtual friends, and uploading photos or status. 10.8% of the respondents use Facebook for searching and making new national or international level friends. However, there was business use of social media as 3.9% of them asserted that they used such media to share their extra-curricular qualities to sell products and earn money from social media, 34.3% shared social events over the media to raise awareness in the society. But there was another category of the users, where 17.6% participants used social media for killing the time.

Impact on Students' Academic Life and Education
The study will examine both the positive and negative impact of Facebook on Students' Academic life. The respondents are asked to answer the 28 questions in Section 2, after collecting data , the researcher will categorize whether using Facebook has any advantage or disadvantage on Students' academic performance.
At first, it is necessary to know how many hours; they spend on Facebook for learning purposes. On questionnaire no 2.23, 35% of them replied that they spend 1 hour for learning purposes. 28.2% of them use only 30 minutes for academic purposes.
From the questionnaire no 2.1, the respondents categorize the main barriers that hinder the adoption of social media in the classrooms at their university. 34.8% of them respond that internet or technical issue is the main barrier to hinder adoption of Facebook in the classroom environment. The next significant barrier is that students misuse of social media, and it might be a threat to apply Facebook in the classroom. 29.5% scored for fear of misusing the social networking sites in academic institutions. The rest barriers are time (15.2%), Content (6.3%), and Curriculum (14.3%).
The study (Appendix 1, Section2) analyzed individual aspects and found that except a few disadvantages, Facebook has a positive impact on students' academic life. If students can overcome those problems, Facebook will be proved as an essential tool for e-learning. Individual aspects of the questionnaire are given below:  Teachers provide the link, materials to students through using social media: The data shows that around 72.1% of the respondents agreed (questionnaire no 2.11) that their teachers provide the relevant courserelated materials through using Facebook.
 Students can consult and get information from each other: Around 66.7 % of respondents agreed, and 6.9% strongly agreed (questionnaire no 2.13) that students can consult with classmates, friends, or respective course teachers and get supportive help regarding their lectures and other questions. In that viewpoint, Facebook is an essential tool of e-learning, according to students' perspectives.
 Facebook group, an effective medium of teaching and learning: In a Facebook group, answers are saved, so that students can look them up later. After analyzing the questionnaire no 2.14, the researcher found that around 66.7% agreed that they benefited from the Facebook group as learning material. If any students fail to access in Facebook due to lack of Mb , they do not feel worries, as they can go to the Facebook group anytime and look up the post later. Thus the students become benefited by Facebook, and it helps them to note down the necessary points. Another important fact is that, to participate in a Facebook group, a teacher does not need to become friends with the students. 72 technique to make student understood their mistakes or lacking. Getting instant feedback, students can take proper preparation for their examinations. 66.6% of them agreed and 8.8% strongly agreed that Facebook can be an essential e-learning tool because of instant feedback.
 Facebook as a helpline service: In Social media, students ask for help/advice on Assignments, solving problems, projects, etc. In the questionnaire no of 2.9 (Section2), 60.4% agreed, and 16.2% strongly agreed that they get instant help or advice from their teachers or classmates regarding assignments, solving problems or projects. On the questionnaire no 2.20, the respondents agreed 69.6% that they always rely on Facebook as a mean educational help.
 Promote student collaboration: On questionnaire no 2.24, it is found that 59.8% agreed, and 6.9% strongly agreed that Facebook promotes student collaboration. On questionnaire no 2.6, it has found that they find Facebook helpful to complete their assignment where students share and obtain information, links, or course-related files. More than 50% of students agreed that for them, Facebook is an essential tool for elearning. Through social media, they gain collaboration between them and come forward to help each other in academic life.
 The Best way for teachers to reach all the students: From the demographic analysis, we found that all of the students use Facebook. Facebook is one of their most favorite social networking sites. Also, through using Facebook, both teachers and students can get an instant notification. In order to achieve students' attention, nothing but Facebook can be the best way for teachers to reach all the students at a time. On questionnaire no 2.27, the respondents confirmed that 49% of them agreed, and 13.7% strongly agreed with the fact.
 Facebook as a means to get updated materials: In this regard, Facebook is helpful for students as 15.3% of students always, and 49.5% of students often (questionnaire no 2.5) rely on Facebook to get updated information about required and non-required course -related materials.
 Facebook establishes the interaction between teachers and parents: From the survey on questionnaire no 2.28, it is found that Facebook establishes a functional interaction between the teachers and parents. Parents get informed by the teachers about the academic results of their students. Around 46.1 % of students agreed that Facebook establishes the interaction between teachers and parents, and both of them as a team can monitor students.
 Teachers make announcements: Through using social media like Facebook, both the teachers and students get to know each other. Also students get advice and help from teachers regarding their assignments or course materials. Teachers also announce the deadline of assignment on Facebook, so that students become conscious of submitting their assignments on due time. 52.3 % of them agreed (See Appendix 1, questionnaire no 2.19).
 A Highly motivating and entertaining way of teaching: Apart from the regular classical environment of the classroom, Facebook assists as a mixture of both learning and laughter. Through Facebook, students get to know their teachers outside the classroom. They feel confident here to ask questions and get information. From students' perspectives, on the questionnaire no 2.4, 44.1 % of students agreed that social media is a highly motivating and entertaining way of teaching, especially for university learners.
 Shy students get confident: More than 54.9% students assert that they feel confident in asking questions on Facebook. (See Appendix 1, questionnaire no 2.12)  The conversation moved from Facebook to Class, Class to Facebook: The last but not the least effect of using Facebook as an e-learning tool is that students get engaged even after the ending of the classroom. Furthermore, they show interest to discuss lectures or examination topics on Facebook. Thus students can give more time to study. To the answer of questionnaire no 2.15, most of the students often or always move their conversation from class to Facebook and then Facebook to class.
 The Teacher acts as a Mentor : Around 61.6% of students agreed that social media helps them to ask course-related questions to teachers (Appendix 1, questionnaire no 2.07). After getting advice from their teachers, students feel confident, and they discovered that using Facebook can lower students' anxiety towards writing in English. From the survey, the researcher also outlined a few disadvantages of using Facebook, which create a negative impact on Students' Academic performance: o Time-consuming: Although the study found that Facebook is an important tool for e-learning, using this social media in class is time consuming, according to students perspective. 50 % of students affirmed this negative side. (Appendix 1, ques no 2.02) o Lower grade: Another negative aspect is found, after analyzing the questionnaire no 2.18 that 54.9% of students agreed, and 23.5% strongly agreed that using excessive Facebook hamper their academic results. They also regret that if they spent less time on Facebook, they would have better grades.
o Lesser time to their studies: The more they engage in Facebook, the less time they spend on their study. As a result they gain poor marks in their examination. The study of the questionnaire no 2.25 found that 56.9% of students agreed that they as Facebook users devote lesser time to their studies. The next questions (2.26) calculated that more than 50% of students agreed that excessive use of Social Networking Sites users scored the lower grades.
o Feel hesitant to be judged before classmates: Most of the time, shy students feel hesitant to ask questions on Facebook because it is open to all of their classmates. If the teacher provides error correction, students feel hesitant to post and to be judged by teachers and students. 66.7% of students agreed that they feel hesitant to be judged before all (ques no 2.10).

Impact on Students' Social relationship
Facebook is one of the most accepted social media, which helps to make the social relationships. It is designed to boost communication among their users. Especially its availability on many mobile devices allows users to continually stay in touch with friends, families, and other associates as long as there is access to the Internet. The analysis was taken from the collected data of Section 3 of Appendix  Facebook for an invitation to social events : Around 13.7% of the students strongly agreed they find Facebook as means to get invited to social events. Moreover, consecutively 60.8 % of students agreed they find Facebook helpful in this regard. These social events help them to build up public opinion. (Appendix1, ques no 3.12)  Getting help related to charity and blood donors through Facebook : After analyzing 3.8, according to students' perspective, 43.2% of students often and 29.7% of students always find Facebook helpful concerning noble social causes (charity / blood donors). For them, as Facebook is accessible, convenient, 24/7 communication, they can seek for help anytime and get instant help regarding blood donation. Also, students as a community create social events and arrange charity for the needy through Facebook.
 Reunite lost or old friends: Question no 3.11 focuses on the importance of Facebook in finding lost or old friends. Around 56.8% of students always and 30.6% of students often find Facebook as magic in finding and reuniting with lost friends and maintaining social bondage.
 Creating Social Awareness: More than 69.6% of students agreed on question no 3.15 that Facebook usage help students to create awareness in society regarding any burning issue.
 Minimize the cultural gap: Most of the students find Facebook as an effective means to make new friends. Through the Facebook profile, they can easily make international level friends too. Thus, Facebook helps to minimize the cultural gap. If we look at question no 3.10, 56.9% of students agreed that minimizing the cultural gap; Facebook helps them to make a wider scope for communication.
 Communicate with alumni: The students find Facebook helpful in reuniting with alumni. This study shows that around 70.6% of students agreed (question no 3.5) that they rely on Facebook as means to get

Impact on Online Business
In using social media, there are also a few business impacts. In the first question of Section 4, 29.7% of students always and 37.8% of students often rely on Facebook in finding online job circulars. In the second question, more than half of the students (52.1%) respond that they rarely use Facebook for running business, whereas only 34% of students always or often use Facebook for running a business. In the third question, only 14.9% of students agreed that they earn some extra money by running a business page in Facebook. To follow-up business group, the students spend an average 30 minutes on Facebook. In the next question, 30.4% of students often find confidence in online shopping through using social media. 35.3% of students respond they do not feel confident as sometimes they are cheated on by online shopping. The final question was asked whether this online business hampers their study or not. Around 40.2% students remained neutral and 35.3% of students agreed that online business hampers their study as they have to spend time on follow-up. 4.8 Negative Impact/Threats of Facebook After analyzing section 5 of the questionnaire, the researcher finds that Facebook has a negative impact on Students' personal life and health issues too. These adverse impacts are given below:  Victim of Facebook account hacking: From 5.1, it's clear that around 13% of students always or often are victims of Facebook account hacking while using Facebook.
 Victim of cyber-harassment or blackmailing: From 5.2, the researcher finds that around 35.1% of the students often and 5.4% of students always became a victim of cyberbullying and blackmailing while using Facebook. And 27% of students occasionally and 3.6% rarely were a victim of cyberbullying or blackmailing while using Facebook.  Disturbed by Fake Accounts: The data shows that 28.8% often and 21.6% always have been disturbed by the fake accounts.

Negative Impact on Students' Physical and Mental Health
The increase in the use of Facebook among university students inspired them to change their conduct and lifestyle. Lack of face-to-face communication may also lead to loneliness, depression, and other mental disorder. The extra time students are engaged with Facebook, and they are at a higher risk of being deprived of their sleep, a rise in depression or anxiety, and low self-esteem. The study continued to show that 24.3% of students often suffer from deterioration in health due to excessive use of Facebook, 36% of students often have suffered from insomnia, 30.6% of students often feel Headache, Eye problem, stress and dark circle for excessive use of Facebook; 30.6% of students often and 11.7% of students always suffer from the emotional problems, mental depression, lack of face-to-face communication due The Key to positive response in these questions is further explored. Four of these questions asked about the role of Facebook in communication, quick way of getting information and a way to get old friends back. Only 1 of top 5 responses involved getting the answers saved for later review: an academic perception. This perception indicates the students taking social media more as a communicating platform than an academic one. The negative responses include issues like getting account hacked, deterioration of health, use as business page, making money by Facebook, confidence in online shopping etc. These responses indicates that nobody amongst the respondents have been a prey to negative impacts of Facebook use largely. The respondents are a control group with conscious and aware undergraduate and graduate students. This may be the reason behind negative responses. Also, one of the queries included health hazards which are often difficult to link with the use of Facebook. In a nutshell, the respondents' positive view in replies makes us hopeful about the effective utilization of social media for academic purpose. However, some precautions and recommendations are needed which is mentioned in next section. Figure 6: Distribution of the responses

Conclusion and Recommendations
The key findings of this study have been given below:  The Duration of use of Facebook per day is 3-5 hours.
 The Duration of use of Facebook per login is 30 minutes by the target group.
 The Average friends' count of the target group is 500-1500.
 Facebook can be an essential e-learning tool for some reasons : Teachers provide the link, materials; Students can consult and get information from each other, Instant feedback, promote student collaboration, get updated materials, establishes the interaction between teachers and parents, A Highly motivating and entertaining platform of teaching, Shy students get confident, etc. 76 learning procedure is time, and this asset can contrarily be influenced by Facebook use. Facebook offers students many appeals that waste scores of their expensive time. If students were able to limit their usage of Facebook only to get in touch with friends on campus and to share academic information, Facebook could certainly contribute to their social belonging and security as well as to their learning process. This study also found that 37.9% of them do not want to use Facebook for business purposes because they think they are very often cheated by e-shopping.
Facebook benefits not only the students but also the teachers. It encourages collaborative learning, which leads to the achievement of a desirable outcome. Mutual discussions through social media increase the level of quality education. It strengthens both peer interactions and student-teacher interactions. Based on the results, the researcher recommends that instructors must encourage the students to use social sites academically. Instructors should persuade students to communicate with them using social sites if they are too shy to ask and get involved in the class. This study also suggests the idea of creating an online social group for elderly students to share experiences and help undergraduate students.
For academic and personal development, the researchers are recommending the students not to use social networking sites during their class time, late-night, and ignoring their personal, family, and social activities. Instead, they should ensure proper time management and balance, self-regulation, self-discipline in using these sites. Moreover, age limitation and introducing National Identity Card (NID) in using social networks may ensure control use of social networks among the students in Bangladesh.
As this study was conducted in a short time, it involved a tiny sample size comprising of only 150 individual student respondents who fall in the target group. The researcher purposively selected the respondents of the study on convenience and accessibility. A study with a larger sample size of randomly selected individuals who fulfill the criteria would be more representative. The study is limited to only Facebook as one of the representatives of Social Networking Sites. YouTube is becoming the next media, where everything now is available such as news, dramas, sports, even TV channels live, etc. So, most people are shifting the spending time of SNS from Facebook to YouTube. Researchers should include these other prominent SNSs in consideration to find the threats by SNS addiction.

Recommendations:
This study comes with the perception of the active students in their use of social media. The intrinsic impact of the social media is revealed by the study. A few recommendations can be drawn from the findings: -Students should limit the use of social media temporally. Overuse of social media kills study time and causes health hazard.
-The use of social media at late night should be avoided as this habit impairs the natural biological clock and reduces workability at daytime.
-Access control in social media is important since the presence of appetizing gossips in political, communal and public groups in social media kills time.
-A use of social media in early morning is rather beneficial since it includes less internet traffic. However, the aim should be solely academic.
-Obsession with close groups should be avoided as it drags slowly in a different virtual world of its own which drifts our attention from normal human lives.
-Finally, exercise of freedom to use social media should be judged by individuals enthusiastically, not by force.