Abstract
This study examined social media addiction and how it affects undergraduate students’ academic engagements in Usmanu Danfodiyo University Sokoto, Nigeria. The study adopted survey research design. All undergraduate students from Usmanu Danfodiyo University formed the population of the study and four faculties (Faculty of Education and Extension Services, Faculty of Social Sciences, Faculty of Management Sciences and Faculty of Art and Islamic Studies) were purposively selected to represent the target population. Research Advisors (2006) was used to determine 370 undergraduate students from the population of 12,300 across the four faculties. Simple random sampling technique was used to select the respondents from the four (4) faculties. The instrument used for data collection was researchers-developed questionnaire. Pilot study was carried out at Sokoto State University and reliability indexes of 0.87 and 0.97 were obtained for social media addiction and academic engagement components respectively. The data were analyzed using both descriptive and inferential statistics. The findings revealed that social media addiction level was high among the undergraduate students and academic engagement was low. The study discovered that there was strong inverse relationship was found between the social media addiction and academic engagement of the undergraduate students with r (368) = -0.91, p<0.05. It was concluded that while social media addiction has remote link to students’ academic performance, and it is directly connected to students’ active participation in the learning process. It was recommended among others that the undergraduate students should be advised to always use social media platforms to support their studies and for academic discussions.