We all know how social media has changed our lives and now we cannot imagine our lives without it. Social media connects various platforms and people on the web. It has proved its importance in various sectors such as businesses, the film industry, music industry, literature, art, etc. It has helped bring various communities together across the globe. Now it is revolutionalizing our studies also. You are just a click away from learning anything, be it a new language, cooking, a new game. It has helped bring all the resources together in one place.

Social media learning is the process of learning through social media such as Instagram, Youtube, LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook, Pinterest, etc. The idea behind this is to instill independent and collective learning in learners. Social media has influenced various areas of our lives, from what we eat, wear, shop, to what we watch, and now to what we learn. Social media is a platform that works collaboratively with inputs from various sources and students, using this in the process of learning opens you to newer ideas and perspectives that would not have even thought of yourself. Moreover, you are exposed to a lot of information and different ideas which influences you to think and come up with even better ideas and think outside of the box.

This indeed has resulted in the development of learner’s creative and critical thinking abilities. It has instilled self-directed learning, where the learner has to analyze the information and choose what is best suitable for him to learn. This can also be seen as imparting decisive qualities, being able to filter information according to their needs and purposes. It has also given the freedom to learn beyond the classroom and has opened various other sources for interactive learning. It has not bound the learner to one teacher, and now the learner with the help of social media can reach out to people and learn new things each day.

Social media learning is said to be active learning, where students directly participate in learning rather than sitting idly in a boring classroom. Also sharing topic-related information, articles, jokes, via social media makes the learning process fun and engaging as well as helps the learner to remember all the information for longer periods as compared to traditional teaching and learning methods.

Some effective social media learning tools can be the use of blogs and articles that enable the students to comment or add their remarks on it. This will help them to analyze the data given and put forward their thoughts and ideas. Similarly, bloggers will also get to know about the ideas of the other learners, and all this will help them to better analyze their own input. Online debates and discussions on various platforms also give a lot of information and encourage students to actively participate in them. Anything, from how to change tires to how to wear a saree can be learned from youtube. Twitter can be used for knowing what are various people’s thoughts including, famous celebrities about a particular issue. Online streaming content such as movies, web series, songs, have also proved helpful in independent and self-directed learning as it is a type of visual form of learning that is pretty easy to remember for eg, historical movies, wildlife documentaries, or even biopics! It is also seen that content learned through these mediums has a deeper impact on the learner as compared to the traditional methods.

Learners can now interact with experts all over the world and not just their teachers with the help of social media. Learners can learn and interact live with the experts they wish to learn from. Moreover, not just learning but social media also provides job and work opportunities. This has helped various learners to find suitable jobs with a lot of options to choose from. Through various sites and apps, one can apply for jobs across the world.

We can also say that social media apart from selective learning, also educates and spreads awareness in day to day life. We can find out what is currently going on in not just our country but all over the world. What social issues that we should take note of and what other’s point of views are regarding it. People, in general, learn so many new and interesting things that probably they did not even know existed before social media.

Engaging Social media in learning or using social media as a tool for effective learning has proven to have worked wonders. And it is the new trend where people are just one click away from learning whatever they want to learn. And with such technological advancements, social media has become an integral part of today’s lives and using it for educational, learning purposes is very beneficial.

However, everything has its pros and cons, learning through social media should always be monitored and the content you access should be checked for its accuracy as anybody can have access to social media, people can also misguide you sometimes with false information. So a limited use of social media in learning is the key to a successful learning process.