THE CRAZE OF SOCIAL NETWORK

THE CRAZE OF SOCIAL NETWORK

BY UDENSI NNAGOZIEM

Youthfulness is traditionally characterized by exhibition of various characters and actions. The nature of youthful experience is greatly affected by cultural and economic norms. Nigerian youth has been known to exhibit various characters tending to the trending factor in the society at large.

The newest Craze that wholly influences the Nigerian youths practically seen habitually is the use of social networking websites and software. The surprising craze grew rigorously from 2007 to this present dispensation. An averagely exposed Nigerian youth with at least junior secondary school certificate has at least one profile in an internet social network whether functional or numb.

It’s deemed necessary no matter age or size among these youths. Majorly, facebook and twitter are the trendy addictive social website while 2go and bbm (exclusively for blackberry phones) are the social trendy phone software amongst the Nigerian youths.

At first as usual, it was seen as a good networking media cheaply connecting the youths. it basically made communication easier and fun for youths across the globe connecting themselves at cheaper rates than phone calls. But lately, it has been noticed that these social network is gradually becoming a nuisance. A towering percentage of average Nigerian youths are seen always clutching a multimedia phone in his/her palm giving full attention to it more than any other activity he/she might be involved in daily. This has been observed to be true as youths uniformly show these characters in various places like at home, school even at church.  They barely pay attention to anything else other than these chat software and social websites. In buses, taxis even bikes, banks, meetings, hangouts, clubs even parties, it’s like heroine addiction. In early hours of the day on twitter, you see them tweeting about their live activities and daily plans and following it up with tweets of their every activity as the day goes down. Facebook is more like a photo gallery and exhibition room as youth daily upload pictures of their various activities expecting comments from friends as much as five thousand.

2go, what’s app and BBM got most youths glued to their phones more than the social website due to its rapid delivery ability of the software. 2go, what’s app and BBM like yahoo messenger delivers messages instantly. BBM which work exclusively on blackberry phones is tagged with this “special respect” due to the fact that blackberry phone are relatively more expensive than some of these other phones which is not compatible with the BBM software. For this “special respect” many youth involved themselves in all sorts of things just to get a blackberry phone which most are even too timid to appreciate and comprehend its operating system and effectively use it well. You can easily pick those “wannabes” out from their expositions when using the blackberry. You see them making annoying sentences which exposes their green minds like “my blackberry has expired”, “my twitter profile pictures” they also need help to do almost everything they do with their blackberry phones. Apart from their very boring chats, they ask for the meaning of every chat slang or abbreviation over and over again even the ones easy to figure out. And yet when they came across someone with a lesser phone and higher I.Q, they try acting up therefore making a total mass of themselves showing how much of a phony they are. Especially on the twitter issue, because majority of these crazed social network “wannabes” can’t use twitter with the excuse of twitter being boring. 2go (A South African chat software) which works on most multimedia phones has more users than any other chat software in Nigeria. 2go’s tariff is so cheap that anybody can easily be on it without unnecessary stress. Being so cheap, it isn’t regarded with much respect such as BBM. From time to time egoistical users are spotted on 2go and tend to look down on other 2go users whom they see as cheap and swagger less judging from their pocket or social status.

At the end of the day the Nigerian youth strangely derive much joy, company and social satisfaction from these social networks. But the total focused mind diversion from other serious business like Education which is unwisely channeled and focused on these social activities is giving rise to grim unseriousness among our youths who are intensely expected to be leaders of tomorrow. Since most of these youths are of age, they are expected without superior surveillance to check themselves and be wise enough to know the right time to do the right thing and adjust wisely, so as not to affect their future success which at this point is feared to be already affected.