do you think the time that south African youth spend on social media can affect their relationship give 3 reasons
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Social Media Popular With South African Youth
October 18, 2011 8:00 PM
Nadia Samie
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MXit - a free social media platform created in South Africa in 2004 - has captured the time and attention of young people, eclipsing homework, movies and computer games. There are millions of registered user accounts. And what are most of these teenagers and young people talking about? ... Dating.
Mobile phones are just about everywhere here in South Africa.... and like in many other countries, people seem to be glued to them - especially teenagers. And it appears that topping the chatting list is MXit - the social media platform.
The United Nations Children's Fund, UNICEF, conducted a survey to better understand how young people spend their free time. MXit was the answer for 30 percent of respondents - far more popular than watching TV, talking with family and friends, reading and - not surprisingly - homework.
UNICEF South Africa Communications Officer Kate Pawelczyk says it is important to understand just how the growth of social media is impacting our children. “The main findings of the UNICEF MXit survey are that young people are spending a lot of time on MXit. They’re talking mostly to friends and family and most often about issues of love life and dating. And a lot of MXit users are interacting with strangers," she said. "We believe that we should be educating young people more and more about how to behave in the online space, to make sure that they’re always safe.”
The study indicates South African teens would rather chat on MXit than actually meet friends in person. It’s something 18-year-old MXit user Nicole Tiedemann considers a problem.
“People are not able to be social because of Mxit. And you’d find people sitting at home on their phone, rather than coming out to a movie. I think a lot of people also don’t get undivided attention. So your relationships do take strain, because you’re not focusing on that person, you’re focusing on ten people at once,” said Tiedemann.
The study found the most common topics on MXit are love lives and dating- even for people in their 20s. 25-year-old Luyanda Mtuli says he mostly uses MXit to stay in touch with his girlfriend - but it is good in other ways too. “I have my girlfriend on MXit so (laughs) I have to talk about my love life. But on the other hand, some people do use it as a form of information as in like what’s happening at school, what’s happening or at work, what you up to lately, stuff like that," she explains. "Like it keeps you informed with what’s happening in the world. So it’s not only about your love life.”
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