social media: it’s benefits and misused by the populace

Ugbo Joshua okori &Okpam, Emmanuel

Wikipedia, the online encyclopedia gives us a simple definition of social media as the interactive technologies that facilitate the creation, sharing and aggregation of content, ideas, interests, and other forms of expression through virtual communities and networks. Thus, Social media are digital technologies that allows the sharing of ideas and information, including text and visuals, through virtual networks and communities.

While social media misused, on the other hand, involves the improper usage of social media, engaging in illegal activities like sharing of falsified information, cyberbullying, morphing, and violation of privacy and cyber terms & conditions.

It is indubitable to contend that social media has been playing a pivotal role in the contemporary society. Its numerous advantages if explored adequately cannot be overemphasized. Due to the presence of social media, the world has been reduced to a global political ward, where we can easily communicate with our love ones both home and abroad in a swift. The contributions of the social media in sectors of life is so robust as it has help to promote businesses, entertainment, even change the way we worship God from the traditional method of going to sit in church to the advanced method of online service. It is indeed an avenue for educational improvement, agricultural advertisement of product, down to small scale business showcase.

Today we have not just moved away from the stone age but we have also navigate tentatively to a global society where Artificial Intelligence is employed through the use of the social media to ease us of our many human day to day tasks. Most of the social media handles include, facebook, instagram, whatsapp, 2go, smiggle chat, YouTube, Twitter, TikTok, Pinterest, Snapchat, LinkedIn, and many others. These social media platforms as earlier stated has given room to seamless interaction in the comfort of our endeavors.

However, despite the unending benefits of the social media to humanity, the attendant effects of these media use to the populace cannot be weigh on a scale of 50/50. Statistically, comparative studies on social media used have severally reviewed that the misused of social media have exceeded it’s targeted attending purposes and benefits. With the help of the social media in our disposal, we have been able to copy as many culture of others into another society thereby adulterating the existence of such cultural practices. For instance it is not in the Africa culture for a girl to dress half naked. The social media has also exposed our children to dirty talks such as sex, exchange of nude, watching of sex videos, internet fraudsters, sex hawkers, drugs, which among others have corrupted the minds of the young children.
Other forms of social media misused include cyberbullying, fake information, scamming of innocent, hacking and blackmailing, impersonation, etc.

Primarily, social media has reduce the reading and writing culture of students to almost a zero level. In writing the English language for instance, students often make mistakes in the use of grammatical terms such as using “cum” for “come”, ‘2’ for “to”, ‘LOL’ for “Laugh out Loud”, ‘BRB’ for “Be Right Back”, ‘DM’ for “Direct Message”, ‘BTW’ for “By The Way”, ‘OMG’ for “Oh My God”, and many more! This, has further adulterated the use of the English Language.

In the just concluded JAMB of the 2024 year, statistic indicated that most students failed the exams possibly because they have dash off the reading culture and dedicated most of their times to the social media.

To have a decent society therefore, parents, teachers, guidance and other concern stakeholders are advised to prone wards on the use of the social media and set some restrictions on the view of some adult related content. Also set a social media monitoring board to checkmate the use of the media from time to time, engage the youth with some positive tasks, as an idle man is a devil workshop! By so doing we will have our future secured and our cultural heritage preserved for our future future!

For Diaspora Digital Media Updates click on Whatsapp, or Telegram. For eyewitness accounts/ reports/ articles, write to: citizenreports@diasporadigitalmedia.com. Follow us on X (Fomerly Twitter) or Facebook