Evaluation of Social Media Applications Usage During Pre-Covid-19 Lockdown, Covid-19 Lockdown, And Ease of Lockdown Era in Nigeria

Technological innovations through digitization have been an advantage during the Covid-19 lockdown era. Coronavirus’s rapid spread incurred stern restrictive policies in many countries due to the rising death toll. The Federal Government of Nigeria, to ensure citizens’ safety of proclaimed a compulsory lockdown of all public places. This development generated a societal norm with technology, using applications like Zoom, Google Classroom, Mixlr, etc., that availed people the opportunity to sustain communications virtually. This study adopts a quantitative method. With the use of Google Trend, this study uses Nigeria’s population as a sample size, observing Nigerians’ level of interest in these social media applications, which have been effective during the Covid-19 era. The sampling is purposive. It focuses on the interest in these social media applications for the past 12 months, which sums up the pre-Covid-19 lockdown, the Covid-19 lockdown, and the ease of the Covid-19 lockdown era. This study found out that preceding the Covid-19 lockdown era, a certain percentage of the nation’s population was interested in these social media applications. As soon as the Covid-19 lockdown restrictive measures were in place, alternatives to maintain communication was through technology. Hence, there was a higher percentage increase in the level of interest in these social media applications. With the Covid-19 lockdown ease, there was a certain decrease in the percentage compared to the pre-Covid-19 lockdown. Therefore, this study recommends that these technological innovations be integrated into workspaces in the post-Covid-19 lockdown season because it would foster digitization and help curb future contingencies.