Abstract

This study investigated the influence of social media on deviant behaviour among students in Kumba Municipality. The descriptive survey design was adopted following the quantitative research approach.

The sample size was 280 comprising of 50 teachers and 230 students selected purposive random sampling from 4 public and 2 private schools in Kumba Municipality.

The data were collected using 2 structured questionnaires (one for teachers and the other for students) made up of 25 closed-ended items each. The data were analysed with the aid of the SPSS version 22.

Descriptive statistics were computed using frequencies and percentages presented in frequency tables. Decisions on descriptive statistics were based on the aggregation of the majority of responses.

Inferential statistics were computed using the Chi-Square test for influence and Pearson Production Moment Correlation Coefficients (R) for the relationship between variables.

The results revealed that the most commonly deviant behaviour among students in Kumba were fighting, physical violence, bullying, threatening and drug abuse while the most frequently used social media platforms were WhatsApp, Facebook and YouTube.

The results further revealed that social network sites, media sharing sites, discussion forums and anonymous network sites all had significant influence on students‘ deviant behaviours in Kumba Municipality. It was concluded that social media has greatly influenced the increasing rate of deviant behaviour among students in the Kumba Municipality.

It was recommended that school authorities should launch sensitisation campaigns to educate students on the good and bad of social media while parents should closely monitor the activities of their students on social media and collaborate with school authorities by reporting any notice of negative changing behaviour in their children.

CHAPTER ONE

GENERAL INTRODUCTION

Background of the Study

As man keeps striving to get life better, the tools and technologies used for human interaction and communication have continuously improved as time goes by.

There are many ideas about the first occurrence of social media. ―Throughout much of human history, we‘ve developed technologies that make it easier for us to communicate with each other‖ (Carton, 2009).

According to Borders (2010), social networks have evolved over the years to the modern-day variety which uses digital media. However, the social media isn‘t that new. In addition, it didn‘t start with the computer but instead the telephone.

During the 1950s, phone phreaking, the term used for the rogue searching of the telephone network, began. This process was accomplished through the use of homemade electronic devices that facilitated unauthorized access to the telephone system to make free calls.

Phreaks were able to find telephone company test lines and conference circuits to complete their task. Brett Borders stated phreaks were able to hack into corporate unused voice mailboxes to host the first blogs and podcasts.

During the 1960s, the public saw the advent of email (Borders, 2010). However, the internet was not available to the public until 1991. Email was originally a method to exchange messages from one computer to another, but both computers were required to be online.

Today, email servers will accept and store messages which allow recipients to access the email at their convenience. In 1969, ARPANET, created by Advanced Research Projects Agency (ARPA), a U.S. government agency, was developed.

ARPANET was an ―early network of time- sharing computers that formed the basis of the internet.‖ CompuServe, the third development of the 1960s, was also created in 1969 with a mission to provide time-sharing services by renting time on its computers. With very high fees, this service was too expensive for many (Ritholz, 2010).

Social media was further developed during the 1970s. MUD, originally known as Multi-User Dungeon, Multi-User Dimension, or Multi-User Domain, was a real-time virtual world with role-playing games, interactive fiction, and online chat. MUD is primarily text-based which requires users to type commands using a natural language.

Bulletin Board System (BBS) was created in 1978, the same year as MUD. Users log into the system to upload and download software, read news, or exchange messages with others.

In the early years, bulletin boards were  accessed via a modem through a telephone line by one person at a time.

At introduction, bulletin boards did not have colour or graphics. Bulletin boards were the predecessors of the World Wide Web (Ritholz, 2010). Conceived in 1979 and established in 1980, the Usenet is similar to a BBS

After the era of BBS came Usenet. Usenet was conceived in 1979 and established in 1980, the Usenet is similar to a BBS. Usenet is a system to post articles or news.

The difference of Usenet from BBS is that, Usenet does not have a central server or devoted administrator—messages are forwarded to various servers via news feeds (Ritholz, 2010).

Many social networking sites were created in the 1990s. Some examples include SixDegrees, BlackPlanet, Asian Avenue, and MoveOn.

The most generally accepted as the first recognisable social media site is SixDegrees though different schools of thought vary with it. There are, or have been, online niche social sites where people can interact, including sites for public policy advocacy and a social network based on a web of contacts model.

In addition, blogging services such as Blogger and Epinions were created. Epinions is a site where consumers can read or create reviews of products. Third Voice and Napster were two software applications created in the 90s that have since been removed from the market.

Third Voice was a free plug-in that allowed users to post comments on webpages. Opponents of the software argued that comments were often vulgar or slanderous.

Napster was a software application that allowed peer-to-peer file sharing. Users were allowed to share music files bypassing normal distribution methods, which in the end was determined to be a violation of copyright laws (Ritholz, 2010).

In 2000 social media received a great boost with the witnessing of many social networking sites springing up. This highly boosted and transformed the interaction of individuals and organizations who share common interest in music, education, movies, and friendship, based on social networking.

Among those that were launched included LunarStorm, six degrees, cyworld, ryze, and Wikipedia. In 2001, fotolog, sky blog and Friendster were launched, and in 2003, MySpace, LinkedIn, lastFM, tribe.net, Hi5 etc.

In 2004, popular names like Facebook Harvard, Dogster and Mixi evolved. During 2005, big names like Yahoo! 360, YouTube, cyword, and Black planet all emerged (Junco, Heibergert, & Loken, 2011).

The rise of social media gained more grounds in the developed world earlier than in Africa. Lanerolle (2013) after conducting a study in 17 African countries opined that, social media started gaining wide spread in African from 2008 which was highly influenced by the growth in mobile technology and more accessibility to the internet.

She cited that, in South Africa, mobile data costs have fallen from two rand per megabyte (MB) to less than 20 cents. And mobile operators (unlike  almost all of their fixed-line counterparts) offer this data pre-paid and often in small bundles.

In Kenya, Mwangi can buy a voucher for around three cents (US) that gives him 5MB of data. He checks Facebook up to 20 times per day and spends about 15 cents a day on data.

As a result, social network services like Facebook and local online information services provided by news organisations like the Daily Nation offer compelling value for low income users, enabling many of them to access relevant information and to communicate comparatively cheaply with their friends and family.

In Cameroon specifically, Social Media did not gain widespread recognition in the early 1990s as the country‘s lone telephone service provider (CAMTEL) by then was expensive for most households to afford.

However, in the late 1990s, there existed a few cybercafés in major cities in Cameroon offering internet service but were very expensive to afford. In 1999, there was a major change in Cameroon‘s media space with the introduction of Orange Cameroon, a mobile telephone network provider (orange-cameroon, 2017).

This marked the beginning of wide spread internet use in Cameroon though was timid as mobile telephones were still very expensive in the country at the time.

In February 2000, another telephone service provider MTN Cameroon was launched and that was reinforcement to the media sector.

With stiff competition amongst the telephone service giants, different mobile telephone service were provided at the time but social media still didn‘t gain a lot of interest.

Bettina (2013) highlighted that social media gained wide spread in Cameroon from 2010 when mobile phones and mobile telephone networks became more affordable and available in major cities.

Presently, Social Media has such a wide scope that needs diligent monitoring amongst youths including students. Social Networking Sites Promote violence, aggression, verbal abuse, bullying, negative behaviour, drug use, explicit sexual content, blackmailing, intimidation and moral degradation.

Mali (2011) designates that the graphic, sexually explicit subordination of students via pictures or words that also include  pornography  is  verbal  or  pictorial material which  represents  or describes sexual behaviour that is degrading or abusive to one or more of participants in such a way as to endorse the degradation.

All these ills and student behaviours are on the rise among students nowadays with the increasing assorted content available on social media. This necessitates the study ―Social Media and Students‘Behaviour in Selected Schools in Kumba Municipality‖.

Statement of the Problem

 

The government of Cameroon has taken measures to curb the use of media technologies within the secondary school milieu so as to reduce deviant behaviour amongst students yet in Kumba Municipality, students go to school with phones, have access to computers, internet and social media sites.

With growing interest on different types of social media platform including: social networking sites (like Facebook, WhatsApp, Twitter), media sharing sites ( those that share photos,

images, audios, videos, multimedia like Instagram, snapchat, YouTube), discussion forums (Facebook groups, Twitter followers, WhatsApp groups etc) and anonymous social networks (user identities cannot be known meant for bullying, gossip, beefing, snooping, criticisms etc. like Whisper, Afterschool), youths are more like to involve in deviant acts of behaviour.

It is possible that the emergence of the social media use among students and associated availability of controversial materials like violent materials, pornographic materials, drug related materials and terror are like to influence deviant behaviour among students.

The ability of social media to offer discretion and a unified sharing tool is likely to lead to student behaviour like sexual immorality, drug addiction, violence, bullying, threatening, scamming and cyber terrorism.

Worst still, the ability of anonymous browsing can give room for students to use fake names and fake profile pictures deviant acts. Students also create groups on different media where attacks on peers, teachers or school property.

Empirical studies point to the fact that strike actions by students are most often organised and coordinated over social media. As a consequence, students turn to be indisciplined, disrespectful, violent, aggressive, rebellious, addictive, lazy, and unproductive.

With the aforementioned problems, it is quite necessary to investigate the influence of social media on students‘ behaviour in Kumba Municipality.

Objectives of the study General Objective

The main objective of this study is to investigate the influence of social media on behaviour among students in Kumba Municipality.

Specific Research Objectives

1. Investigate the effects of social networking sites (Facebook, WhatsApp, Twitter) on students behaviour in Kumba
2. Evaluate the influence of media sharing sites (Instagram, snapchat, YouTube) on students ‘behaviour in Kumba.
3. Assess the influence of discussion forums (WhatsApp groups, Facebook groups, Twitter following, Instagram following) on students ‘behaviour in Kumba.
4. Determine the influence of anonymous social networks (Whisper, Askme, After School) on students ‘behaviour in Kumba Municipality.

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