Use of Social Media and its Perceived Implications on the Social Life of Students: A Case Study of the Students of Joseph Ayo Babalola University Ikeji - Arakeji, Nigeria

The uses of social media have developed into a universal and virtually inevitable phenomenon that has transformed the method by which students communicate, interrelate, mingle and socialize, and have become an integral portion of students' social and cultural lifestyle. Subsequently, students use a considerable measure of their time on social media. University students and adolescence are viewed as the prevalent users of this contemporary technology. Notwithstanding the mounting quantity of literature on the uses of social media around the globe, there is a drought of investigation on how the uses of social media affect students ' social life. This evocative, investigative study scrutinized the kinds of social media platforms that students generally use, the aggregate time students spend on social media, the reasons why students use the social media and the effects of the use of social media on students' social life. The sample population of the study consisted of students in Joseph Ayo Babalola University, Ikeji-Arakeji, Nigeria. A well-structured questionnaire was administered to the students to gather their responses. This was analyzed using the Statistical Package for the Social Sciences (SPSS) version 23. The findings of the study showed that the most frequently used social media platform was WhatsApp. The study also revealed that the majority of the sampled students testified to be actively engaging in the use of social media platforms between thirty minutes to one hour daily. The study additionally found that majority of the students were always excited and wound up saying "only a couple of more minutes" whenever they were using the social media platforms and checked their social media sites to make updates before embarking on any other task daily. The study also identified that the students knew that their academic performance endured on account of their' social media life and also that it stressed them. Despite the students understanding of these facts, the study found that students flunked to reduce the time used on social media. The study also found that 22.4% of the students were dependent on social media and that they used social media more for socialization than for academic purposes. Consequently, fruitful uses of social media for academic purposes were prescribed so as to reduce the adverse effect of the uses of social media.