Special Section on Social Networking, Teaching, and Learning Costs and Benefits of Facebook for Undergraduate Students

Originally, the Facebook network was meant for students ’ use on campus, but is it worthwhile for them? Facebook is a broad source of information for students, offering correspondence between students, providing files and information exchange, and allowing new acquaintances on campus. On the other hand, Facebook includes a variety of distractions, such as uploading pictures, view-ing profiles, videos, and photos of friends, chatting with friends, and playing, which lead to pro-crastination and injures the learning process. The present study was conducted in order to exam-ine the influence of Facebook on the students ’ learning process in undergraduate demanding fac-ulties, such as engineering. In particular, it was aimed at identifying various costs and benefits associated with the students ’ use of Facebook and investigating the impact of the col-leges/schools ’ Facebook pages on the students ’ use of Facebook for learning purposes. A ques-tionnaire was filled in by undergraduate students, and Facebook pages of academic institutions were examined. Facebook was found to be particularly important among first year students, bene-fiting their social absorption in the campus and their learning sources, but these benefits were re-duced for senior year students. However, it was found that social activities on Facebook con-sumed a significant amount of the students ’ time, during the surfing and even after, thus nega-tively affecting their learning process. Moreover, the majority of the examined Facebook pages that were opened on the initiative of academic institutions were mostly inactive, giving no bene-fits to students and no incentive to use them