Social media and the society: A case study of WhatsApp in Zimbabwe.

Abstract

This paper is a descriptive and explanatory survey that seeks to establish what Zimbabwean youths are really doing when they spend a lot of time on social media particularly the messaging platform WhatsApp. Questionnaires and focus group discussions were used as research instruments over a group of 150 respondents drawn from a population of university students in Chinhoyi, a small town in Zimbabwe. The paper shows that though WhatsApp has brought an affordable communication platform, it has become subject to abuse by those who take advantage of its distinct features. Its ability to offer one on one chats and one too many chats in real time has made it become a platform of choice in communicating all sorts of information that range from being useful, insulting, abusive; to outright jokes and absolute trivia, hoaxes and porn. Keywords: social media, whatsapp, virtual communication platforms, virtual societies and social networking sites