USE OF SOCIAL MEDIA AND INTERPERSONAL COMMUNICATION SKILLS AMONG UNDERGRADUATES IN TWO UNIVERSITIES IN OYO STATE, NIGERIA

It spawned the social media that now no one can live without, even established institutions and organizations. With the help of social media applications, there is an endless amount of information that people can learn from and share with one another. Undergraduates' interpersonal communication skills have been greatly enhanced by the advent of social media, which has simplified communication and made life easier overall. There are a lot of reasons why students use social media, and one of the most important is to practice interpersonal communication skills, according to the study. Thus, this paper's study takes into account the social media usage and interpersonal communication abilities of students at two institutions in Oyo state, Nigeria. Twelve thousand eight hundred undergraduates from two different schools in Nigeria's Oyo State made up the study's population. The research method was a descriptive survey. Since a sample size of 241 was attained using the questionnaire as the data collection instrument, a multistage sampling strategy was used for the population. For both descriptive and inferential statistics, we used data counts and percentages. Undergraduates made up the majority of responders with 134 (or 57.0%), while men accounted for 101 (or 43.0%). There was a high rate of one-on-one contact among undergraduates using social media platforms such WhatsApp, Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, and Snapchat, with 194 students reporting this usage (=3.83). Among the 154 students surveyed, 65.5 percent used social media as their primary means of interpersonal connection, both online and in person. The majority of students (154 out of 65.5) and (=3.63) spent two hours per day on average communicating with others via social media, according to data on how often they use these platforms. The results suggest that students who did not learn how to effectively communicate with others in college may suffer from poor self-esteem, which in turn lowers their quality of life. Interpersonal communication skills are so expected to be good among students. Therefore, social media provides a digital venue where students may share their ideas in a variety of forms with loved ones back home.