Social Networking Sites: a Perceptional Study

Abstract

There exist several Social Networking Sites (SNSs) to connect academics and support scholarly endeavors, namely Academia.edu, Mendeley, Research Gate, Zotero, Scholastica etc. Various studies on SNSs found that the SNSs have both positive and negative impact. But, no study has revealed which impact is greater. Hence, this study made an attempt to unveil whether the social networking sites boast greater amount of benefits or threats on students. The main objective of this study is to identify the perception of students on Social Networking Sites. The study used both primary and secondary data. Stratified Random Sampling technique has been adopted to select the sample respondents. The sample size of the study was 75 which include 52 students and 23 scholars. Online survey has been conducted to collect the required primary’ data. Mann-Whitney U Test, Wilcoxon Signed Ranks Test and Factor Analysis have been employed to test the collected primary data. As SNS becomes the greatest entertainment of students, it could be subject to round-the-clock scrutiny by the service providers. Despite social networking sites offer greater benefits than threats, students must be aware of the threats associated with it, besides, the educational institution must he cautious enough to handle these sites. There are various academic related networking sites to share scholastic proficiency. Instead of surfing into the custom-made social networks, the students should turn towards the academic networking sites which would help them to excel in career