IMPACT OF SOCIAL MEDIA BASED-DIGITAL LITERACY ON REDUCTION OF INTERNET FRAUD AMONG ECONOMICS EDUCATION UNDERGRADUATES IN SOUTH EAST, NIGERIA
Abstract
University students' increasing usage of social media has led to both potential for online
education and increased susceptibility to online fraud and other cybercrimes. This study
looked at how digital literacy based on social media affected the decline in online fraud
among South East Nigerian Economics Education undergraduate students. The study
used a quasi-experimental research methodology with 85 undergraduate students of
Economics Education chosen from three public universities in South East Nigeria. It was
based on frameworks for digital competence and social learning. Participants were
divided into two groups: the intervention group and the control group. Cyber ethics, online
risk detection, privacy management, critical evaluation of online content, and fraud
prevention strategies were the main topics of an eight-week structured social mediabased
digital literacy program that was given to the intervention group via interactive
platform like WhatsApp. Validated tool measuring vulnerability to online fraud (α = .78)
were used to gather data both before and after the intervention. According to the results,
the intervention group's members showed a statistically significant decrease in their
vulnerability to online fraud, dangerous online conduct, and cybercrime-related
involvement goals. The study comes to the conclusion that structured digital literacy
treatments based on social media can be a useful way to protect undergraduates from
online fraud. It suggests that in order to encourage responsible online behavior and
improve cyber safety in Nigerian higher education institutions, digital literacy programs
should be incorporated into university curricula and student orientation programs.
Keywords: Social media, digital literacy, internet fraud, cyber safety, undergraduates,
intervention study, Nigeria.
Published
Issue
Section
License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.
All articles published in Advanced Pharmaceutical and Biomedical Letters (AdvPBL) are distributed under an Open Access Creative Commons License BY/4.0. Users are allowed to freely download, read, distribute the materials in any medium or format, remix, reuse the articles or quote the articles, so long as proper attribution is given to the original creators (authors and publishers). Articles may be used for commercial or non-commercial purposes. Users are free to disseminate the work to colleagues or wider scientific community. By submitting their article, the author(s) grant publisher permission to publish, including displaying, storing, copying, and reusing their content.