Abstract

Of the many forces shaping adolescents, the media is the most underrated. In response to tragedies such as social problems like rising teenage pregnancy rates, murders committed by teenagers the media aren’t often blamed as the source. It is the vicious videos that have drastically increased the sexual desire of adolescents. Sexuality involves complex behaviors determined by multiple factors, among which social media exposure plays a prominent role. Adolescents are active consumers of social media. Social media use has been climbing sharply in recent years, especially in younger populations such as secondary school students. A study of this magnitude is relevant in this era where the media in this digital age seems to put social media in a very influential spot which has the power to increase geometrically as one of the key forces contributing to increasing sexual attitudes of adolescents. The use of descriptive study design was employed, and a self-developed questionnaire titled ‘social media contents and sexual attitudinal disposition (SMCSAD) questionaire was used for data collection. A total number of 300 subjects participated in this research. Result showed that (65.0%) of the total respondents agreed to the statement that the easy access to internet and huge amount of time spent on social media influenced the sexual attitude of adolescents, (82.0%) agreed that adolescents enjoy visiting their social media pages regularly, (58.0%) agreed that messages from various blogs stimulate adolescents to enter into a relationship, (67.0%) agreed that peer pressure contributes to the use of social media, (75.0%) agreed that social media (Youtube, Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, etc.) exposes adolescents to sexual contents online and that (62.0%) agreed that sexual attitudes are promoted via the use of pictures posted on blogs to adolescents, also (70.0%) agreed that Facebook has a significant effect on the sexual behaviour of adolescents. (70.0%) agreed that being able to share pictures and videos online instigates sexual attitude in adolescents. It was recommended that adolescent educators and their parents are expected to increase their knowledge of digital technology so that they can have a more educated frame of reference for the tools their parents/clients and families are using.