The Usefulness of Facebook in Improving Social Skills among Degree Students at the Faculty of Education UiTM

Abstract

When the popularity of the internet has increased worldwide, there have been various websites that have been established and used all over the world including Facebook. Having almost one billion users, Facebook has been very popular amongst youth and the usage of this social network site is increasing daily. Social networking websites like Facebook as virtual communities which allow people to connect and interact with each other on a particular subject. It also provides users a profile and enables them to upload and share photos, music and various types of messages they would like to share with other people. Additionally, these sites provide social and emotional support, information resources and ties to other people. Therefore, this study is aimed to investigate the importance of Facebook among students and also to see in what ways Facebook helps to improve students’ social skills. The data are collected by distributing questionnaires to the sample and the data are analyzed using Statistical Package for the Social Sciences (SPSS) version 17.0. The samples of this study consists of 85 undergraduates students of the Faculty of Education, Universiti Teknologi MARA which 64 are majoring in TESL and 21 are majoring in Mathematics. It is found that students feel Facebook is important for them to communicate with their friends via wall posts, to gather under a group of similar interests, and to meet new friends. Nevertheless, the findings have shown that the students did not think that Facebook has any influences at improving their social skills.