A COMPARATIVE STUDY RELATED TO THE EFFECTS OF SOCIALIZATION AND SOCIAL NETWORKS ON THE STUDENTS OF AL-SUFFAH ISLAMIC UNIVERSITY AND THE MODERN UNIVERSITIES IN KARACHI CITY

Abstract

The phenomenon of socialization and its uses for learning has been under investigation since ages. Almighty Allah (SWT) sent His messengers, who were masters in mass communication and socialization to expound and direct the nations pointing to the virtuous direction. When the lustre of Islam appeared in the Arab world, Prophet Muhammad (PBUH) particularly used socialization to teach and preach the community a correct way of life defined by the ultimate Divine. In this modern age, social networking sites have gained wider usability and acceptability and undoubtedly became an obligatory instrument of interaction amid the students specifically at the advanced level of education. In this paper we did a comparative analysis between the student of first Islamic University (Suffah) and the modern universities against the effects of socialization and social networks by applying the Social Gratification Theory to observe behaviour and effects of social networking sites (WhatsApp and Facebook) on modern university’s students; all the data was collected form graduate and undergraduate students from five major public sector universities in Karachi. The findings revealed that Social Networking Sites (Facebook and WhatsApp) do not increase the interaction between students and teachers which tends to decline their learning outcomes. In comparison, socialization increased the interaction and augmented the learning outcomes as seen in the students at Al-Suffah University. This study demonstrates a connection between adverse and innovative qualities of Social Networking sites and displays the paths for upcoming studies by enabling an improved understanding of usage of Social Networks.