Assessment of Nigerian Teenagers’ Privacy Preservation Awareness on Social Media Space

Abstract

This study focused on the way teens in Nigeria are securing their privacy in the social media space. It considered the ease of third parties' access to users’ information, what can be done, and what teens are doing to protect such information. The study was anchored on Protection Motivation Theory and used an in-depth interview instrument to gather data from 30 participants taken from teens from different parts of Nigeria but residents in Abuja. Results showed that some teenagers were concerned that their personal information could be used inappropriately by people outside of their known contacts for such activities as cyberbullying, stalking, and identity theft. Some of the respondents did not have that awareness. Among the respondents who had such privacy concerns, some did not know how to follow the privacy settings on their social media applications while some of them did not care to apply those settings. The popular applications among the teenagers in the study include WhatsApp, Facebook, TikTok, Instagram, Snapchat, and YouTube among others. The study concluded that there is a need to create awareness among teenagers in Nigeria on the dangers of privacy breaches, and steps should be taken to secure their privacy online.