Social impact of technology: A systemetic review and analysis

Technology plays a crucial role in the developmental activities of every nation, in general and even more important for the developing economies. Essential for government, as well as the society, to understand the importance of maximizing existing technology. The aim is to have technological enhancements for sustainable growth in today’s competitive environment. The innovative activities related to technology not only impacts the economic status of a nation, but also its social status. Technological knowledge is identified as a crucial engine for a nation to develop and outperform its competitors. Another irrefutable fact is that the major source of development for every economy is its people or citizens especially the category of youth. The major perspective of this paper is to study the aspect of technology and the manner it empowers the youth specifically in the African continent. Youth act as catalyst of change, (i.e. social, technological, economical) to endeavor growth and developmental activities. The data for the same is extracted from Scopus Database. Considering 180 published papers chosen from the last ten years starting from 2009 to 2018 (September 27, 2018) covering different keywords i.e. Social Impact; Technology; South Africa; South African Youth. The findings are drawn out by a systematic review and bibliometric analysis to identify the authors, keywords, and countries who have contributed the most in this area. The results reveal the awareness of this concept among authors to a greater extent. The keywords like technology, social impact, has been a part of the explanation but the aspect of youth and its development is genuinely a gap. This study has identified the different clusters that explain the existing literature and future prospects of the research in this area. The implications are discussed in detail in the subsequent sections of the paper.