Privacy and Security of Content: A Study of User-resilience and Pre-checks on Social Media

Abstract

In recent times, cybercrimes, kidnapping, and ritual killings are being enabled through the use and abuse of social media technologies and students are becoming cheap targets. Consequently, this study seeks to investigate the imperative of electronic communication styles among students via social media channels vis-a-vis the users' resilience before and during communication on social media to ensure that the message is routed to the intended recipient. In this study, we adopted the case study approach and 3500 students were drawn from different academic programmes in a known tertiary institution in Southern Nigeria. Validly completed questionnaires from 1000 students were analyzed. Findings revealed that 96% of the students who use social media are not concerned with any form of security screening before sending messages on social media networks via their smartphones.