A Study Of Social Media Use And The Impacts On Female Representation On Nigerian Young Women

There is a popular idea that the Internet and social media have consistently altered people’s way of life in various ways.It has also been observed that in the process of packaging media contents,females are mostly used to depict what purportedly ideal situations have to look or be like,and in the process,they are made to look or act in certain ways that are not always consistent with what obtains in reality.Issues surrounding female representation on social media,therefore,become a concern for the world of research.Currently,the Nigerian Bureau of Statistics(NBS)reported that more young Nigerian women used social media than their male counterparts.To this effect,this study intends to examine the effects of social media female representation,and also investigate its effects on Nigerian young females.An appraisal of two theories is used in this research work to capture the essence of this study,which are Social Comparison theory and Media Dependency theory.The representation of females on social media has created some notions in young women on how they should dress,behave and act according to social media standards,therefore they often compare themselves to how females is been represented on social media based on what they see or watch.Social media users developed strong attachments to this social media,especially female,in the process of constant access to these social media platforms,they become dependent on the information gotten from this social media platform,which in turn influences their perception,as regard their body image,appearance and beauty.Data collection was done with the aid of a well-structured questionnaire which contained questions structured to tackle the study’s aims and objectives.A total of 400 samples were taken from two universities in southwest Nigeria,which are the University of Ibadan and Lead City University.The result was computed using analytical tools including descriptive statistics such as frequencies,percentages,and mean distribution,and further inferential statistics such as Analysis of Variance(ANOVA),Logistic regression model,and Linear regression model were also employed.The Statical Package for Social Sciences(SPSS)software was used to carry out analysis for the study.The data shows that the most preferred social media networks among young Nigerian females are Whatsapp(45.5%),Facebook(18.3%),Instagram(16.3%),and Tik Tok(10.3%).The top3 most commonly used social media platforms among young Nigerian females are Tik Tok(23.8%),Instagram(20.9%),and Snapchat(19%).The study found that social media sometimes gives a wrong or exaggerated perception of females.Most of the sample population believes that young females are poorly represented by social media(2.534).According to 80.8% of the sample population,women stereotype exists in different ways with the grand mean value of(1.39).Most young Nigerian females are not moved by the Western woman’s ideology of an ideal body with a mean value(2.349).Hence they do not agree that social media has an impact on young female body representation with a mean value(1.934).Further statistical analysis showed that social media does not statistically affect the young Nigerian female body representation.This may suggest that young Nigerian females have other interest in the use of social media other than how their body is represented.