Beyond the Hashtag: Social Media and the Challenges to Cyber Security
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.51983/ajcst-2021.10.2.2837Keywords:
Hashtag, Social media, Cyber Security, Facebook, YouTubeAbstract
Social media may be seen as the new oil that makes the world go round providing access to all manner of information about the users. With the challenges to cyber security, social media users now require a level of awareness of the impact of their actions. This study focuses on the awareness level of social media users to the threats and risks of using the platforms and the extent to which the users are prepared to take responsibility. The study adopted a quantitative descriptive cross-sectional survey research over WhatsApp with 95 respondents selected from two institutions using random selection. Data collected were analyzed using IBM SPSS version 23 to generate summaries of descriptive statistics. All (100%) the respondents are within working class ages although most were aged 31-40 years (45.3%). All users were always on social media (SM) (100%), post daily on social media even though not all (21%) of them read terms and conditions associated with the different social media platforms. Also (55%) of the respondents agree that social media influences their thinking. However, majority of the users are unbothered about the aftermath of their posts as few respondents (32%) disagree that the thoughts of other users about their post is not their problem but that of the other users while (87%) of the respondents believe they can defend their posts. Few respondents (27%) believe that it is possible for litigation to arise as a result of their post on social media and (26%) believe that the application stores their records, which encourages litigation. Despite high level of awareness of the impact of acts of users on cyber security, users are more interested in their protection than that of other users. Whilst regulation would go a long way to manage identified threats, regulation should seek to regulate the coding of social media platforms while social media users garner the requisite emotional intelligence required as a defense mechanism for cyber security.
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