THE USE OF FACEBOOK IN THE PHILIPPINES AND ITS POSITIVE AND

NEGATIVE EFFECTS IN THE EDUCATION OF FILIPINO HIGH SCHOOL

STUDENTS, A CASE STUDY

 I. INTRODUCTION

Facebook is an online platform that helped a lot of people especially the

teachers in their conduct of online classes. The use of Facebook has positive and

negative effects on the education of students and this case study is focused on those

matters.

The recent COVID-19 pandemic brought a lot of changes globally particularly

in education sector. With this, teachers used different platforms to serve as an

avenue for teaching – learning and one of which is the use of Facebook.

Social network allows individuals to construct a personal profile within a

bounded system and connect with common users within that system (Boyd and

Ellison 2008). Over the years, the use of social networks has considerably

expanded, and these include websites that are related to work (e.g., LinkedIn.com)

or those that are used solely for recreation (e.g., MySpace). These social media sites

do have a common purpose, and that is to connect people digitally. Social network

sites (SNSs), including MySpace and Facebook are popular among young people

(Silius et al. 2010) because these can be used in education to enhance student

learning and encourage them to network and share resources with one another

(Alexander 2006; Boulos and Wheeler 2007; Chen et al. 2009). In these social

networking sites, a user has direct interaction with another participant; thus, creating

different kinds of groups that cater to different needs. Facebook, one of the popular

social network sites, has become a powerful communication medium. In fact,

Facebook is described as “one of the new titans of the Internet” as it facilitates

interconnectivity among users through personal relationships and recommendations

with the inclusion of features including like and comment (Schwartz 2011). On a

global scale, slightly more males than females use Facebook and the largest
Facebook users are those in the age group between 26-34 years of age followed by

18-25 years old and then 13-17 years old (Hilton and Plummer 2012). The use of

Facebook also allows the possibility of creating closed groups that allow

asynchronous and synchronous interactions among its members (Meishar-Tal et al.

2012). This facilitates sharing of information, such as links to websites, text

documents, pictures, and many other features. The Facebook group contains at

least two of the three components of the learning management systems: the digital

content component and the interaction component. Hence, it raises the possibility of

utilizing Facebook as an alternative learning management system in both

synchronous and asynchronous teaching platforms.

The Covid-19 pandemic causes global imbalances and challenges in different

sectors such as in health, business and education (Sakketa & Khoeber, 2020;

Sumner et. al., 2020). One of the measures implemented to reduce the spread of

coronavirus is the temporary closure of academic institutions. Nonetheless, for the

teachers to continue to cater for their students, the use of different teaching –

learning delivery approaches were adopted. These are modular, pure online and

blended learning approach. The type of approaches to be implemented depends on

the accessibility to both teachers and students. Modular approach is preferred, if

students do not have any gadget and internet connection at all. In this approach, an

individualized instructional materials were being printed and distributed to the

students which serve as guides throughout the lessons, activities, and assessments

(Malaya, 2020). Students with gadgets and stable internet connection prefers to be

engaged in pure online. In this approach, teachers use application such as Google

Classroom and Schoology. Students with gadgets yet unstable internet connection

prefers to be engaged in blended learning. Blended learning used both online and
modular approach to increase students’ understanding, interaction and involvement

(Jane & Ellen, 2021). Since engaging in pure online or blended learning can be

costly, teachers and students tend to explore different application that is less

expensive. One of the possible platform that can be used for learning is Facebook. It

is a social networking application that helps people to connect and entertain users

(Isaac, 2021). In the Philippines, Facebook is a popular application. Hence, it is

being used by 74 million Filipino (Martha, 2020). Due to the current health crisis,

Facebook is being explored as an avenue for teaching and learning. Hence, students

show good perception and positive attitude towards the use of Facebook (Oducado,

et al., 2019). Thus, this study, aimed at determining the actual issues encountered by

the students when using Facebook for educational purposes.

Specifically, it aimed at the following questions:

a. What is the history of Facebook? and

b. What are the positive and negative effects of using Facebook for

educational purposes?

II. BODY

1. TARGET MARKET IDENTIFICATION

This case study is focused on the Filipino students who are high school

students and the effects of their use of Facebook on their studies, whether

they may be positive and negative effects. It is very important that the

positive and negative effects on the use of Facebook by Filipino high school

students be studied and determined because this will be a guide in order that

education industry leaders have basis in crafting their policies. Negative

consequences on the use of Facebook must be considered in doing or

 creating laws, rules and regulations so that the education of students

specifically the teaching-learning process will not be hampered and be

developed more to suit for Filipino students’ needs. Basically, the target

markets of this case study are the High School Filipino Students.

2. MARKET NEEDS

The market needs of this study are focused on the positive and

negative impacts of the use of Facebook by Filipino High School Students.

This study is very imperative since knowing the effects especially the negative

ones will help school heads as well as educational institutions’ leaders to

change or to improve their policies specifically on the use of Facebook by

teachers and learners.

3. FORMS OF IMC IN USE

In order to communicate with the market and help persuade target

audiences to accept its messages and take action accordingly, the forms of

IMC in use includes digital marketing and public relations. Digital marketing as

a form of communication uses the Internet and online based digital

technologies such as desktop computers, mobile phones and other digital

media and platforms to communicate with the teachers and the learners

regarding the issue on the positive and negative impacts of the use of

Facebook by Filipino High School Students. The other form of commination

tool is through public relations. Public relation is the practice of managing and

disseminating information from an individual to the public in order to influence

their perception. With this, it could help to persuade and inform target
 audiences about the positive and negative impacts of the use of Facebook by

Filipino High School Students by presenting ideas and explaining the issues

that was being discussed.

4. ANALYSIS OF CASE

The use of Facebook for educational purposes has been the topic for

debates for so many years already especially by education leaders as well as

other stakeholders who are affected in some ways by the use of Facebook. It

is undisputed that Facebook has helped a lot of teachers and learners in their

teaching-learning process especially during the height of the Covid-19

pandemic.

A. The History of Facebook

Facebook was developed in 2003 by a college kid named Mark

Zuckerberg, and the story of its creation is pretty wild. Unlike most

companies, the original Facebook, FaceMash, wasn’t conceived as a

business idea. It was a sort of game to compare photos of girls and

comment on which one was hotter. This story, made famous by the

movie The Social Network. Moreover, Facebook was founded by Mark

Zuckerberg with his college roommates and fellow computer science

students Eduardo Saverin, Dustin Moskovitz and Chris Hughes. The

website's membership was initially limited by the founders to Harvard

students, but was expanded to other colleges in the Boston area, the Ivy

League, and Stanford University. It gradually added support for students at

various other universities before opening to high school students, and,

 finally, to anyone aged 13 and over.

B. These are the positive impacts of the use of Facebook by Filipino High

School Students:

a. One popular reason in favor of Facebook, at least in the

Philippines, is the cost of access — thanks to the Facebook-

Smart and Facebook-Globe deals of providing free access to

Facebook. The cost of using Facebook as an educational

platform helped the teachers and students to not spend too

much for their online classes. This platform is free so the

students were able to maximize the use of Facebook. Moreover,

since the use of Facebook is free, this platform has been made

available for students anytime and anywhere and making their

learning activity conducive especially in its financial aspect;

b. Students had a generally favorable perception towards using

Facebook as one of the means to help them in their learning

particularly when they are not inside the classroom. The favorable

perception towards Facebook is manifested on the widespread use

of this social media platform in the daily lives of the students. It is

even said that the use of Facebook helped a lot of students to learn

their lessons and to be creative in their studies;

c. Educational institutions explored Facebook as a means of not only

to communicate with students but also to facilitate self-directed

 learning. There has been so much to learn on how Facebook or any

other social media that can aid students’ learning, nevertheless, it

offers potential benefits in the teaching-learning process that should

not be overlooked;

d. Faculty members are already utilizing learning management

systems to facilitate learning in class. Facebook, although not a

learning management system, is utilized by instructors to

disseminate academic related information and to communicate to

their students thus, making students always informed of the

schools’ activities, examinations, lessons and even assignments;

e. Facebook is being used by many teachers and students both in

public and private as a way to integrate socialization in schools

which is one of the important roles of education. Through this, it can

enhance the communication between the instructor and the

students, promote collaboration, and develop the students’

computer and language skills. Likewise, Facebook is found to be

well-suited for sharing discussions and thoughts about current

events; and

f. Facebook can be used as a medium in facilitating peer support

among the students. They also found that FB has been used mostly

to facilitate exchanges that promote group cohesiveness and

teamwork.
 C. The Negative effects of the use of Facebook are the following:

a. Teens that use Facebook frequently may become narcissistic. If you

are not already familiar with that term, dictionary.com describes

narcissism as an, "inordinate fascination with oneself; excessive self-

love; vanity." Most likely these are not the character traits you desire

for your child;

b. Teens who have a strong Facebook presence may display

psychological disorders, such as anti-social behaviors, and mania &

aggressive tendencies. An anti-social child often does not consider

the effects their actions have on others. This can be quite dangerous,

especially during the already-volatile teen years. Perhaps this should

be termed the anti social media effect;

c. The Facebook effect is real, but teens who "overdose" on

technology daily, and this includes video games too, have higher

absenteeism from school and are more likely to get stomach aches,

have sleep issues, and feel more anxious and depressed; and

d. Too much use of FB is connected with the lower academic

achievement of the students insinuating a negative effect on the

scholastic performance of the students.

5. KEY ISSUES AND GOALS

 The issues in this case study is whether the use of Facebook has

positive impacts or it has detrimental effects on Filipino High School Students.

The answers to this issue is very important and imperative so that if the use of

FB has good effects then, FB must be used and considered in the curriculum

of the Education system in the Philippines. If the use of FB has negative

effects, then, all schools must unite and make a policy that will end the use of

FB in schools especially in the secondary education schools. These issues

must be answered and known to all because it affects the future of Filipino

students. We do not want our future leaders to be ignorant and depressed

because of the use of Facebook.

6. RECOMMENDATIONS

The result of this case study tells that the use of Facebook, as an

educational platform for Philippine Secondary Education schools, has more

positive impacts or effects on the learning process of Filipino students. With

this result, we can say that, Facebook, must be incorporated in the curriculum

of High School students here in the Philippines. Using FB now and in the

future will help us build intelligent and compassionate individuals that will

make our country, our world, a better place to live in.

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