Social Media Influence on Personal Security among the Youth in Nairobi City County, Kenya
Abstract
This study examined positive uses of social media that include warning and preventing individuals from violence resulting from negative uses of social media and user victimisation. The study was guided by Space transition theory which states that criminals are more likely to commit crimes in cyberspace more than in physical space due to anonymity and identity flexibility. The objective of the study was to determine the forms of social media use among the youths in Nairobi County. The target population were members of the Professional Criminologists Association of Kenya (PCAK). Purposive sampling was used to select 155 youth respondents from a population of 15000 youths and 145 law enforcement informant interviewees drawn from 2,000 law enforcement officers in PCAK in Nairobi County. Piloting of the questionnaire was disseminated among 30 PCAK youths Nakuru chapter. The research instruments were verified by the supervisor for content validity. Statistical Packages for Social Sciences, SPSS and Microsoft Excel software were used in data entry and descriptive statistics were used to analyse the data. Qualitative data were analysed using content analysis, coding, classification, and text inferencing. This study was significant to academic research, criminal justice practitioners and the private sector to assist in goal formulation and achievement of cyber security. The results of this research showed that the form of social media that youth mostly prefer +are WhatsApp over other social media platforms. The most preferred social media platforms by both genders were found to be WhatsApp and Twitter. It was recommended that future research could focus on the modern methods of social media as technology is dynamic. This will give direction on the contemporary forms of social media and their relationship to personal security; this, in turn, improves the security settings suitable for the users
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