Is Social Networking a Waste of Time?

Bernhard Warner reveals in his article the fuss in today’s generation dealing with the loss of productivity brought on by multi-tasking between work/school and social networking. Social media has its pros and cons, however the author mainly favors it in his article, stressing the fact that social media is far more valuable in the concept of creativity, courage, and computer coding. Social media, in my opinion, is a huge distraction to students in all schools. I see student’s spending excessive amounts of time during class texting, snapchatting, facebooking, instagraming, and tweeting their friends. It’s a big distraction in the learning environment. In the Time Magazine (U.S. Edition), an article titled Wired for Distraction: Kids and Social Media, submitted by Dalton Conley, states that students and people who are heavily involved in social media have "continuous partial attention". Constant distraction affects not only how well kids learn but also how their brains absorb the new information. Sure, some kids can do a good job multitasking, but how many kids can text and listen to an important class lecture at the same time? The brain doesn't do a great job filtering multiple things at once, just like the brain can’t when texting or talking on the phone while operating a motor vehicle. Despite the fact that social networking is a huge distraction in the learning environment, it is amazing how the Internet is changing people's lives. People are able to quickly do research and gather data on the web, navigate through websites flawlessly, and most people are able to find anything on the Internet in ten seconds flat thanks to search engines such as Google. We obviously can’t ban social media from schools and colleges; however students should start making wise decisions and change their habits to become less distracted by social media networks in class.