Utilization 0f Social Networking Sites By Undergraduate Students Of Michael Okpara University of Agriculture, Umudike, Nigeria:- Amaoge Dorathy A

Abstract ' .... . This study examined the utilization of social networking sites by the undergraduate students of the Michael Okpara University of Agriculture, Umudike, Nigeria. Descriptive survey design was used for the study with a population of 2,560 registered library users in 2019/2020 academic session. Using simple random sampling technique, a sample of 256 respondents representing 10% of the population was adopted for the study. Data was generated using questionnaire designed with four-point likert rating scale. Out ofthe 256 copies of questionnaire distributed to the respondents, 251 copies representing 98% were returned and used for analysis. - The Statistical Package for Social Sciences (SPSS) was used to compute the mean score and-standard deviations and supplemented with percentages and frequency tables. The findings revealed that the various categories of social networking sites used are Facebook, Twitter, Badoo, Friendster, MySpace, 2go, Whatsapp, Google, Bebo, Linkedln, LiveJournal, Youtube, Yahoo, and Orkut. The results also showed that Facebook, Twitter, Badoo, MySpace, WhatsApp, Google, Linkedln, YouTube and Yahoo are used at a very great extent.The finding further revealed that the social networking sites were basically utilized for purpose of communicating and interacting with friends, online learning, finding friends online, leisure and personal socialization, personal activities (searching for jobs), academic purposes such as group discussion and watching movies. The findings also revealed that the dangers associated with utilizing social networking sites include: e-crimes (e £ identity theft theft ofvaluable data, financial loss), internet addiction, laziness, standard crimes (e.g. kidnapping, fraud, murder)Jmmoral act (e.g. prostitution, pornography), lack of privacy, child abuse etc The paper concluded and made recommendations based on the findings ofthe stu y.