ON USE OF SOCIAL MEDIA IN EDUCATION AND LIFELONG LEARNING

Taking into account the growth in the last decade regarding the use of IT&C technology, with the advances brought by smartphone, smart cities, the internet of things and other such approaches to integrating technologies in daily life, educational endeavors have been made to adapt and integrate such new technologies. As Social Media becomes more and more present in everyday life, we are interested to analyze the influences of social media on education in general, and on lifelong learning in particular, especially among young people, who are more prone to using such electronic interactive tools, given the current technology-driven and knowledge-based society. Thus, in this paper, we focus on how people, especially young people, perceive the use of social media in education and in job placement, looking at the possible advantages and disadvantages of using social media in education in general, and in lifelong learning in particular. Taking into account recent studies from literature, we conduct a quantitative analysis, using data obtained through a survey conducted online, which targeted young people from urban areas, mainly from university cities from Romania. We provide general analysis of the survey results, through the use of descriptive statistics and ANOVA. Based on the results of the analysis we argue with regard to the positive impact that using social media in education may have on eLearning, and discuss how eLearning platforms might be modified to be on par with social networks and other such means of online interaction. Moreover, we point out how trainers/teachers can use social media tools as either a blended means of teaching or as a full online teaching experience.