Digital Empowerment of Students in Universities in the South-Eastern Zone of Nigeria

Abstract

The digital empowerment of the information society is related to whether or not one has the capacity to use information technology and its contents, and whether or not one could maximize the possibilities of information technology to participate meaningfully in society. This paper investigated the extent of digital empowerment of university students in South East Zone of Nigeria. Four research questions were used. Simple random sampling technique was used to select 1,125 year two students for the study. A 60 -item questionnaire was used to collect data which was analyzed using mean and standard deviation. Findings indicate the students were aware of the empowering potentials of digital technologies and were motivated to be digitally empowered. However, technical access and competencies in digital technologies were lacking, implying that the prerequisites for digital empowerment of youths (awareness, motivation, technical access, and competence) were inadequate. Some recommendations for digital empowerment of university students were made.