THE IMPACT OF SOCIAL MEDIA ON THE YOUTH: THE GHANAIAN PERSPECTIVE

Abstract

Today's world is a global village. Everyone is connected to one another in this vast network generated by the Internet. As social media sites continue to grow in popularity it promises a lot for the modern youth. Social media has been widely adopted, with high enthusiasm among youth around the world. With very few studies focusing on youth social media use in Ghana there is wide open array of work to be done. Based on the findings of several research studies in social media area, it has been found that these Social networking sites are having a great impact on the lives of young people. Also since most of the research works have been carried out in other countries, it was found necessary and important to carry out a study in Ghana on the impact of Social Media on the youth. The main objectives of this study were to investigate the extent of social media use and the purposes, access and impact of its use by the young people in Ghana. Two hundred youth aged between 15-25 participated in the study.

The findings revealed patterns of young people's social media use consistent with similar studies of youths in other countries. The study revealed the need for young people to have a greater awareness of the risks of social media use. It was found that the majority of Ghanaian youths were using Social media on an enormous scale, mainly for communication purposes. According to this study, although social media has a positive impact on the youth, yet quite a large number of respondents reported having met with negative experiences on these online sites.