INFLUENCE OF SOCIAL MEDIA ON THE WRITING AND READING ABILITY

CHAPTER ONE

INTRODUCTION

Background of the study

Social media is the fastest growing web application in the 21st century, a fact attested to by its wide usage and the wide-ranging consequent influence on the populace. There is indeed abundant evidence that millions of people across the world use social media on a regular basis for various reasons (Daluba& Maxwell, 2013). In fact, the wide nature of applications like Wikis, video streaming and applications, and social networks makes it the phenomenon of the century. Though social media use cuts across all age groups, studies have, in addition, shown that it is predominant among young persons (Onuoha&Saheed, 2011) and/or students (Dahlstrom, de Boor, Grunwald, &Vockley, 2011; Al-rahmi, Othman & Musa, 2014). In fact, Rosen (2011) found that while those born between 1965-1979 (‘Generation X’), spend approximately 13 hours per day on social media, those born between 1990-1999 (‘I Generation’) spend not less than 20 hours per day on social media. Kalra and Manani (2013) pointed out that these young people use social media for interaction, socialization and entertainment.