THE CONTRIBUTION OF SOCIAL MEDIA TO SOCIETALVALUEDEGRADATION AND MORAL DECADENCE AMONGYOUTHSOCIAL MEDIA USERS IN BUTAJIRA CITY ADMINISTRATION, ETHIOPIA

ABSTRACT Social media is increasingly becoming main stream among youths; serving as important tools for facilitating interpersonal communication, social activism and awareness creation, and recreational, business and educational activities. However, in recent years, there has been a growing public outcry that its advent has increased the rate of societal value degradation and youth moral decadence, particularly when one views the decline in the morality of youths’ online experience. This paper, thus, sought to investigate the extent to which social media contributes to societal value degradation and moral decadence among youth social media users in Butajira city administration, Ethiopia. The gamut of the study is anchored based on four theories of mass communication: the Uses and gratifications theory, Media ecology theory, Social cognitive theory, and Symbolic Interaction theory. Based on the purpose of the study, the researcher employed a descriptive research design involving the use of both quantitative and qualitative approaches. While determining the study groups, easily accessible and purposive sampling technique was used. A total of 120 respondents were selected for this study to represent the entire population of the study. The data for this study has been collected through a self-developed questionnaire and in-depth interview schedules. The instruments used to collect data were validated in terms of content validity. The data collected within the scope of the research were analyzed descriptively with the help of Statistical Package for Social Sciences (SPSS) software, version 25. Results revealed that the social media phenomenon is a large promoter of vices and strange values such as bullying, violence, fraud, premartial sex, pornography, early sexual debut, having multiple sex partner, adultery, nudity, sexual promiscuity, indecent dressing, sexual abuse, harassment, e-crime, gambling, copyright infringement, inhumanity, and many more among Butajira city youth social media users as well as one of the major contributor to the ongoing societal value degradation and youth moral decay in the city. On the basis of the findings, the study has suggested pertinent recommendations with the view to help curb social media driven societal value degradation and youth moral decadence.