Utilization of Social Media Among Undergraduate Students of University of Ilorin, Ilorin, Kwara State

Social media has become an integral part of the lives of people of all ages around the world as it enables people to communicate easily and across distances. Hence this research was carried out to investigate the utilization of social media among undergraduate students of University of Ilorin, Ilorin, Kwara state, Nigeria. The research design was a descriptive cross-sectional design, multistage sampling technique was used to select 419 respondents from the population and a self-structured questionnaire was used as a tool for data collection. The information obtained was analyzed using descriptive statistics and presented in tables and figures. Majority of the respondents 277(66.7%) were between 18-23 years of age. The findings from the study showed that most of the respondents 224(53.5%) among the respondents were Christians. More than two-third 344(82.1%) of the respondents were Yoruba. The study also revealed that a higher proportion 181(43.2%) of the respondents were in 400L. The findings from the study showed that almost half of the respondents 206(49.2%) often and 116(27.7%) always access the social media platforms. The study also showed that most of them 186(44.4%) often and 146(35.3%) always use social media for academic purposes. The study also revealed that majority of the respondents 250(59.7%) spent more than 7 hours in a day on social media platforms. Also, more than half of them 225(53.7%) has more than 5 social media platforms. A high percentage of them 257(61.3%) access social media at night. The study also revealed that there is a significant difference in the extent of utilization of social media among undergraduate students of University of Ilorin, Ilorin, Kwara state, Nigeria with p-value = 0.024