Social Media: The Good, the Bad and the Ugly

Social media as defined by the online Cambridge dictionary are websites and programs that let people communicate and share content online, especially on social networks.

Early Days of Social Media
Since the coming of social media platforms in the early 2000’s with the likes of Hi5, yahoo messenger; most were used as a tool of communicating with friends who are far apart.

Facebook created in 2004 became popular in Nigeria sometime in 2007 when most of us used it to find our friends who we have lost contact with, or crushes we can no longer see.

Back then social media was more of a find lost friends place with other social media applications coming which were mostly for finding relationship, such as Badoo, Eskimi etc. Initially, people used the apps such as Facebook to reignite lost relationships, reunion with childhood friends.

In those early years of social media everyone used his or her real names as the need to keep one’s identity also it was easy to find old friends as long as they were on social media all you had to do was search their names. The early days of such social media apps of Facebook, 2go etc became marred with deaths of ladies who travelled to see their social media lovers.

The Good
In a lot of ways, the advent of social media has done us better; a way of communicating with friends and family who are far apart, for most of us who have relatives living in countries far away social media apps have made communication easier. We can easily be involved in the lives of such friends and family without physically traveling miles.

In recent times it has been a tool for criticizing or airing our views about governments policies that is why in countries where the government wants to clamp down on the people it starts by restricting the people from having access to social media. It has been a source of information, dissemination of news.

The Bad
In the early days of social media, we saw news of ladies who were killed after they went to visit some social media lover. However, aside the killings in recent times social media have become more than a communication tool as such some negatives have come out of its use.

We are aware that most romance scams or generally impersonation scams are done on social media; there was a story of police office whose wife had fallen for scammers who posed as a former vice president requesting their account to assist them.

Aside, scammers using social media these days with the monetization of social media paying social media users most users now only post sexual contents or suggestive contents, for instance on Facebook most ladies if they are not dancing seductively, they are dancing without bra to gain followers.

It is now disheartening that 9 (nine) out of 10 contents are all about sex, more heartbreaking is these people are mostly teenagers. Some apps such as snapchats majority of the girls there post seductive/semi-nude videos just to gain attraction.

This is a cause of alarm as it is very sad even those that you think are supposed to give educational information such as nurses most of them only make contents on sex nothing else. It is no longer news that on the app called tiktok some ladies go live just to show themselves nude, it brings the question as to how morally corrupt the generation who are the patrons of that app are; recently there was a trend of people dancing to a song and the some of the videos uploaded can be considered as porn.

It is not just about sex on social media, people now make contents of them taking all sorts of drugs, they are videos of people cooking with mixtures of alcohol, and other hard substances.

Aside all these mentioned there is an issue of privacy or no privacy these days anyone can just make a video of anyone without their consents which they post on social for content. These lack of consent from the person being recorded breaches right to privacy.

Just some time ago a lawyer made a video discussing with someone and posted it with a caption which led to backlash on the legality of her doing such. It is really now a sad occurrence that no one cares about privacy anymore.

The Ugly
In recent times most social media platforms like TikTok, Facebook, X (formerly) twitter have now gotten monetization options to pay users for their contents. With the monetization pay outs we have seen all sorts of contents these days; anything is posted from Get Ready with Me (GRWM) from bathroom, being semi-nude/nude. There has been a spike in fake news as well as defamatory post just for clickbait; it’s becoming an epidemic, with so many people who have made some alleged defamatory posts being taken to court, defamation is either civil or criminal.

As a civil wrong it is the tort of defamation, divided into libel (which refers to permanent forms such as writing, print and online posts) and slander (spoken words). A person whose reputation is harmed can sue for damages against the person who defamed. The same statement can also lead to criminal liability.

In the states that apply the Criminal Code (the southern part of Nigeria), sections 373 to 381 create the offence of defamation. In the states that apply the Penal Code (the northern part of Nigeria), sections 391 and 392 do the same. Section 24 of the Cybercrimes (Prohibition, Prevention, etc.) Act 2015, which was amended in 2024, is widely used to prosecute defamatory or insulting messages sent online.

This dual civil and criminal exposure means a single publication in Nigeria can give rise to both damages claim and a prosecution. However, this has not deterred people from making defamatory posts for clickbait.

It is no longer news that due to the payout on social media these days most people’s content is solely sexual just to get gifts or payout from followers. Just posting sexually suggestive videos or pictures will get any lady instant.

A simple scroll through any social media app you will find so many posts by ladies with either sexual captions, sexual contents (talking about sex related topics) or semi-nude videos/pictures. It is no surprise that ladies who post such contents have a lot of followers like the popular cliché “sex sells”.

The disheartening part of this social media craze of posting suggestive and sexual contents is that there is no more shame, people are not concern about their image, people’s perception of them or the future, because of people were really concerned dressing naked online will not be a thing.

These days the generation is not concerned about making great strides in education/academic pursuit, technological advancement but concerned about social media following being posted by blogs or when they trend.

People brag about their followers or being posted on popular blogs. Just recently an artist talked about the platforming of people who have nothing to offer which he tagged as “olodo uprising” sadly people failed to see the point he was making some argued on the money he has compared to a content creator he used to explain his analogy.

Conclusion
The rise in content creation is now a pandemic, go to most tertiary institutions, public places and everyone is making content. Firstly, I have no problem with making content, however the pressure to make money through that means because we see some people who claim to have made immense wealth from there has become the greatest negative impact of social media, everyone wants to make content.

This craze has made a lot of people look for very unconventional ways to amass followership or generate traffic to their social media accounts, even if it means being naked. Social media apps which pay users for sexual content has equally increased the social media frenzy as most people use such for making money. It is disheartening that recently a mother used her children as tools on an app where she was paid to used her children for sex, this is something that is beyond comprehension. I believe to sanitize the social media space, these apps should remove monetization, or avenues of gifting users as these incentives are the reasons that the users do anything for their teeming audience.

The author, Ochima George Esa, is a legal practitioner, social commentator, writer, public analyst. He can be reached via talk2georgedesquire@gmail.com