Youth Restiveness and Social Media Narrative in Contemporary Nigeria

There is an emerging social media narrative which has become an indispensable part of democratic setting where social media has come to shape the society as a result of the information on the Internet. Social media has come to put democratic actors on their toes and this is usually carried out by the youth. Social media has come with its frailties which have added to the existing conflict in Nigeria. Aside unemployment, poverty, bad governance, and drug abuse among others that are confronting the youth under democratic society in Africa, social media has come to compound the conflict situation. The unverified information represents negative aspects of social media such as hate speech, wrong information/messages, docile attitude ofgovernment under democratic system and a host of others. Has the emergence of social media alleviated the challenges on ground or has it come to compound the problem? The study adopted a documentary approach. This method relies on secondary sources such as books, journals, articles, reports and other relevant materials. The study found that the relationship between the Internet and democracy has not been explored. The study also found that if government is not proactive in handling the gap between the Internet and democracy, the youth restiveness will go on unabated. The study recommends that strong legal framework and enforcement should be put in place to curb the menace of the negative side of social media. Even though democracy connotes freedom, it must be managed properly in order to accommodate the weaknesses of social media in the society and take advantage of the positive aspect of social media.