Undergraduate students’ use of social media in school: A need for regulatory policies in Nigerian universities

Social media/networks have proven to improve learning and overall students’ progress in their programs when properly used. However, social media have been strongly criticized for its strong negative impacts on students’ performance in their studies. This study, therefore, explored the regulatory policy options to effectively manage students’ use of social media/networks in Nigerian universities. The study used a mixed-method design for the collection of appropriate data to address the objectives. The population of the study include all the undergraduate students in Nigerian universities and seven top administrative staff of the universities who often get involved in policy dialogue, policy crafting and policy implementation. To collect both quantitative and qualitative data, both online and off-line open-ended interviews were conducted for undergraduate students of which 498 valid responses were retrieved. For the seven top university administrative staff, open-ended semi-structured interviews were conducted in their offices during fieldwork for data collection. The validity and trustworthiness of the instruments for quantitative and qualitative data collection respectively were determined by three experts. The reliability of the instrument measured using Cronbach’s alpha is 0.87. The collected qualitative data which had been recorded were transcribed and analyzed using text analysis and frequency query cloud with the help of Atlas.ti. Findings from analyzed data show the major challenges confronting students in the use of social media, abuses of social media, and was also found that there are no existing regulations or policies controlling the use of social media/networks in Nigerian universities. The study recommended the enactment of social media regulatory policies in Nigerian universities.