The Negative Effect of Social Media on Society and Individuals -By Fatimah Hamid Omotayo

Social media is a form of electronic communication such as websites through which people create online communities to share information, ideas, personal messages, and other content such as videos for their benefits.

Social media has been of great help to the whole nation at large because it is now easy to pass information across to anyone within and outside the country.

Social media space has become a place of learning where we receive lectures, tutorials, and learn new skills to improve our lives.

It enables us to connect with our long-term friends, family members that we haven’t seen or heard from them for a long time and it helps the business owners in an advertisement. Social media also promotes our businesses and let the people know of our products and what we have to offer.

Social media helps to bring two or more people together for business or education purposes.

However, it is so saddening that social media has annihilated the life of the youth of nowadays because they are now using it to promote evils of all kinds, they find pleasure in watching different pornography movies on this social media, sex chats with the opposite sex in the name of video call and even send nudes of themselves to their opposite-sex which may lead to masturbation and unlawful sexual intercourse. Some engage in online fraud where they make people cry, for them to laugh.

Social media has made many religious children stayed away from their Lord and even forgotten all the teachings of their religions. They have submitted themselves to be adopted by the devil.

It has even gone beyond imagination these days, whereby ladies meet guys on Facebook, Twitter, and the likes, and they would start a relationship with them, being myopic of any of their relatives or friends.

They engage themselves in secret affairs which lead to unwanted pregnancy, and the female child starts to abort continuously till her womb gets damaged or leads to different kinds of diseases.

In my opinion, I am not condemning the use of social media at all but I would like to urge all youths to return to the positive use of social media and should endeavour to use it to do something useful and beneficial to them. It would be helpful to them if they stay away from all that can imperil their futures on the so-called social media.

Fatimah Hamid Omotayo is a 100 level student of Education and Biology, Usmanu Danfodiyo University, Sokoto.