Adeola Adeyemo
We have for a long time left the era of going to post a letter at the post office and having to wait endlessly for the letter to be delivered and for the response to come back via the same route. But thank God today, one can stay in the comfort of his or her room in Nigeria and chat with someone in the USA without any delayed feedback.
About a decade ago, Nigerians paid much to browse at cyber cafes to check vital information on websites as well as to read and respond to emails in their mailboxes. Then, social media was almost unheard of in this part of the world. The most common thing then was to go to the cyber cafe to go and check a personal mailbox or to google search a project or an assignment.
The story is no longer the same today. The social media and the growth of internet service providers has birthed a whole new virtual world for all to get excited about. Youths do not need to throng the Cybercafes as much as they used to, as almost everyone now has the enabling device to go online from the comfort of their homes.
Research shows that nine out of ten youths sampled randomly are either using a Blackberry device, an Ipad or a smartphone with an internet connection. Within this huge number, statistics reveal that an average Nigerian youth with a smartphone is having one or more social media and virtual chat applications actively running on it. From Facebook to Twitter, Instagram, We Chat, Whatsapp, 2go and Blackberry Messenger, Nigerian youths are finding more ways to connect in the virtual world.
The benefits of such virtual chat apps and the ease of social media has however been two-fold. For some, it has caused their pitfall as they have spent too much precious time on it, resulting in negative impacts on their academics, businesses, relationships and so on. In some extreme cases, people get defrauded, bullied, and cajoled into devious relationships that could lead to death. Last year, the social media was agog with the news of Cynthia Osokogu who left her school, Nasarawa State University, Keffi to meet male friends she met on Facebook and was murdered by these same friends in a private hotel in Lagos. Similarly, in the UK recently, a 14-year-old girl committed suicide after repeated bullying by her friends at school and on social media.
On the flip side, there are several advantages of social media. Many have used it to build relationships, grow their business, establish their fan base and much more. To some people, the social media affords them an opportunity to chat and escape from boredom, while some see it as an avenue to explore the world of opportunities available on the internet.
Lots of jobs search sites abound online, with many testifying to have gotten their dream jobs via such sites. In the area of information dissemination, many have argued that the social media is the future of news sharing and that it is only about time when people will no longer wait for the traditional media sources to get news. As a matter of fact, before most traditional media sources report news stories, it would have already been trending on social media. Most traditional media channels have as well joined the social media to meet the yearning and expectations of their teeming followers.
Many have been duped by people on social media, many have gotten their dream job through it. Many have gotten breakthrough from the social media, while many have as well met their waterloo at it.
In the virtual world, its different strokes for different folks.
This article was first published by TelegraphNG
