Educational Use of Facebook: A Comparison of Worldwide Examples and Turkish Context

In addition to profoundly impacting the way people communicate and interact with each other, Facebook, as the leading social network site, has also radically reshaped how people access information and knowledge. Therefore, numerous studies regarding Facebook effect on various domains of life have been carried out. One such domain is education. Seeing the popularity of Facebook among learners, researchers across the world have sought to understand the effects of Facebook on educational settings. For this reason, this article aims to review the current research studies focusing on the utility of Facebook in educational settings providing a comparison between the global and the Turkish contexts. This research review firstly reports students’ Facebook usage profile such as (a) reasons for using Facebook, (b) the amount of time spent on Facebook, (c) the kind of personal information shared on Facebook and (d) students’ privacy and security awareness on Facebook. Furthermore, this study explores both educational benefits and concerns highlighted by the current literature regarding Facebook use in educational settings focusing on a comparison of the global and the Turkish contexts.