Effects of Use of Social Media in the Middle East and North Africa Region Youth

This chapter reviews the physiological and social effects of social media use among youth in the Middle East and North Africa. It summarizes the results of many studies conducted by the author from 2019 to 2022 on the impact of social networking sites on identity. The first part addresses the perception of a sample of Arab researchers about the transformations and fluctuations of self-identity within the virtual space and its fluctuation between the real world and the world of social media, highlighting consequent behaviors aimed at sculpting multiple and different self-images created according to the needs of the electronic crowd. This is what the author calls “conscious schizophrenia.” The second part focuses on the cultural dimensions. Self-evaluation resulting from the unconscious exposure of Arab youth may lead to reshaping the parameters of cultural identity in a globalized framework. This situation risks cultural alienation among youth in the Middle East and North Africa. To confront this imminent danger, the author calls for imposing a reinforced self-identity via social media without uprooting it because of its deeper roots.