The Influence of Social Media Patterns on the Development of Private Enterprises: Changing the Narrative of Youths in Ogoja Catholic Diocese, Cross River State, Nigeria

Abstract

Social media platforms ranging from the elaborate Facebook to microblogging websites as Twitter, Instagram, LinkedIn, Myspace, YouTube, and WhatsApp and others are examples of social media tools. Thus, this study examined the influence of the emerging social media patterns on the development of private enterprises in Ogoja Catholic Diocese, Cross River State. The literature specifically showed how social media tools have dominated the Catholic Diocese of Ogoja with increasing number of users, mostly youths. Two hundred (200) respondents were selected using purposive sampling technique; the data were analyzed and results presented in percentage frequency table counts. Among the findings, the study showed that social media patterns have contributed significantly to the innovation and creativity of youths. In addition, it also revealed that social media patterns have allowed entrepreneurs to communicate speedily and cheaply with customers and also constructed a database to generate business leads to increase sales, grow skills swiftly, adjust and increase their productivity without stress. Again, the study revealed that young people used social media patterns for questionable activities. Sequel to these findings, the study concluded that social media patterns have helped in the development and growth of entrepreneurship. Following this, the study recommended that parish priests should, first, allow these youths walk them through the places they go online, and who they communicate with as this would help in streamlining their activities in order to redirect them for entrepreneurship development. Again, youths should be assisted to choose the most appropriate social media tools to adopt because customers have become increasingly knowledgeable about what they need