With the rapid technology advancement, it seems
impossible for everyone not to have at least one social media account in their
lives, in particular, the younger generation or Gen Y. Hence, it is no surprise
that youths are the prominent users of social media such as Facebook,
Pinterest, Instagram, Twitter and LinkedIn with 92% of online daily access,
including negative accessibility, for example terrorism. The likelihood of
these youths’ involvements in terrorism-related activities through social media
is possible. Therefore, the aim of this study is to evaluate the youths’
intention in terrorism involvement through the social media influence. By using
the quantitative data, this study was conducted to identify the role of social
media in terrorism in today’s world towards youth and to evaluate the influence
of social media towards Malaysian youths’ intention to be involved in
terrorism. One hundred and fifty questionnaires were distributed to youths
around Selangor. The findings in Pearson Correlation showed that most of the results for correlation test are
below 0.05 (p<0.05) which indicates social media as a source of information
towards society, absence of parental control in social media usage, sense of
belonging gained through social media and radicalization through social media
can influence Malaysian youths’ intention to be involved in terrorism. The
findings for independent t-test in this study showed that the p value for social
media as a source of information towards society is 0.238, absence of parental
control in social media usage with the p value of 0.095, sense of belonging
gain through social media with the p value of 0.972 and radicalization through
social media recorded the p value of 0.743. These values are all above 0.05
hence it indicates that both male and female youths do think that these
variables can influence Malaysians youth's intention to be involved in
terrorism. The implications of this study are that youths do think that social
media can influence the youths’ intentions to be involved in terrorism and
appropriate measures need to be taken by the government, related agencies, and
parents to monitor the youth interactions in social media.
