The impact of cybercrimes threats on social media usage in Tanzania

This paper examined the impact of cybercrime threats on social media usage in Tanzania. Protection Motivation Theory (PMT) and Social Cognitive Theory (SCT) guided this paper. Descriptive survey design was employed utilizing mixed research methods to collect quantitative and qualitative data. The target population comprises the social media users from Dar es Salaam region, from which a sample of 340 was drawn using two stage cluster sampling technique. Data was collected through questionnaire and semi-structured interview. Seemingly Unrelated Regression (SURE) was employed to test postulated relationships between phishing attacks, cyberbullying and harassment, data breaches and social media usage factors such as engagement, trust and platform preferences. The findings revealed that phishing, cyberbullying and data breaches significantly undermine social media usage. Furthermore, phishing attacks lowered trust and engagement, cyberbullying deterred engagement particularly from women and youth while data breach had the most significant negative impact by lowering user confidence in privacy and security. The study concludes that cybercrime threats have a crucial impact on user behavior and lower substantial engagement on social media platforms in Tanzania. The research proposes to enhance digital literacy campaign, enforcement of cyber laws and platform level safety features to restore trust and promote safe interaction.