Impact of Social Media for the Transformation of Social and Political Ideologies among Youth- A Co-relational Study of Youth

Abstract

Social networks have fundamentally changed the modern world or at least, the way ordinary people became recipients or active participants of the information circulation. Social media's quick global spread and continuing innovation have had a profound impact on how people connect on both the micro and macro level. Everyone has access to news, information, and knowledge that they can quickly and readily share with anyone, reaching a far greater number of recipients than any traditional media source (Hemphill et al., 2016). Social media has far more serious implications on the ideological development especially among children whose mental development is seriously impacted by the content posted on social media. There is no second thought in that the social media has revolutionized almost every walk of life but it is also inevitable that all the content being published is neither always true nor beneficial. It becomes crucial to understand the ways in which the social media turns damaging and how it alters the ideologies among youth. This study, therefore, tries to establish facts regarding the detrimental impacts of social media as the key shaper of ideologies among youngsters that promote radicalization, extremism, or polarization.

Purpose:  To comprehend new ideologies of societies, social media play an essential role today in sociopolitical and especially when youth are concerned, as the digital generation learns from the content present on social media platforms. Any society’s youth are in the age when their political, social, and cultural beliefs are not set as they are still in the process of being built by different factors, including social media. The objective of this review paper is to know the way, social media shapes, unshapes and reshapes the social and political ideologies among youth.  Moreover, this paper has reviewed the information regarding impact of influencers and online communities on youth ideologies.

Design/Methodology/ Approach:  A systematic review approach has been used with the lens of PRISMA. Through Google scholar, using key words 70 articles were finalized for this paper. These articles are related to seven themes which were finalized at earlier. The said themes focus on the impact of social media in existing arena on social and political ideologies of youth.

Findings: Online social networks such as twitter, facebook, and Instagram have become the best source of youth information as it provides rapid information, news, and discussion in greater coverage. These have changed the way people share information in the society through leveling the playing ground for anyone to share information. Nonetheless, there is a flip side of it since social media makes information so easily accessible;mis-information and all forms of it are also easily spread. The issue is that these are algorithmic systems; in which emotionally charged or fake news receive more attention than accurate reporting.

Practical Implications:This review paper may guide and warn the public and research community regarding the uses and misuses of social media. 

Originality/ Value:This systematic review is pretty unique because it exposes the positive and negative impacts of social media on social and political ideologies of youth.

Key words: social media, youth, political ideologies, social transformation, misinformation, political participation.

Paper type: Review paper