Abstract:

Technological innovations through digitization has been an advantage during the Covid-19 lockdown era. The rapid spread of the novel Coronavirus incurred stern restrictive policies in many countries, due to the rising death toll. The Federal Government of Nigeria, in order to ensure the safety of citizens of proclaimed a compulsory lockdown of all public places. There was minimal use of public transport and most people had to work from home, except for essential workers e.g. health workers. This development generated a societal norm with technology, with the use of social media 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 sample size, observing the level of interest of Nigerians in these social media applications which have been effective during the Covid-19 era. The sampling is purposive as 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 Covid-19 lockdown era. This study found out that preceding the Covid-19 lockdown era, a certain percentage of the nation’s population had interest in these social media applications, but 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 of these social media applications. With the ease of the Covid-19 lockdown, there was a certain decrease in the percentage compared to the pre-Covid-19 lockdown. This study therefore recommends that these technological innovations be integrated in workspaces in the post-Covid-19 lockdown season because it would foster digitization and help curb future contingencies.