Social Media and Moral Decadence Among the Youth in Ghana: A Case of Effia-Kwesimintsim District

Abstract

Social media has witnessed much usage over the years since its inception. Social media use especially its contents consumption comes with some level of influence on the users' lives, either positively or negatively. This study investigates how contents consumption has contributed to the decline of the youth's morality. This research aimed at identifying the youth’s experiences and outcomes of their consumption of social media contents on their moral lives. A qualitative research method was used to investigate this, where twenty-eight (28) participants were sampled for the data collection via interviews and focus group discussions. Social media contents come with positive impacts on users; however, the negative contents seem to outweigh the positive ones. According to the data, moral decadence is a reality and the contents the youth often consume have contributed to moral decadence in the district. The study further points out that the consumption of social media contents lures the youth to become immoral. The study concludes that the youth have become morally decadent as they practice unethical lifestyles such as disrespecting the elderly, masturbation, prostitution (Hookups), fraud, identity theft, drug abuse, stealing and betting as a result of consuming negative contents on social media. The youth are found in such unethical lifestyles because they watch contents such as sexual-related contents, gambling contents, videos and movies on any of the social media handles. It is therefore, recommended that, proper measures should be put in place to check the canker to avoid the occurrence of more decadence in the society. Again, to achieve this aim, there should be government and stakeholders’ intervention especially social media service providers to regulate social media usage in Ghana.