Background: The globe is commemorating today's advancements in information and communication technologies (ICTs), but as it stands, technology has both advantages and disadvantages. The debatable question is, does the use of social media have a negative or positive effect on students’ academic performance? This study assessed social media usage and its effect on academic performance among Undergraduate students of Abubakar Tafawa Balewa University, Bauchi-Nigeria.

Methods: A descriptive cross-sectional study design was employed among 423 undergraduate students from the three Faculties of Abubakar Tafawa Balewa University, Bauchi-Nigeria. The data was collected using self-administered semi-structured questionnaire, analyzed using SPSS version 23.0 and the level of significance was set at 0.05.

Results: Majority of the respondents were within the age of 18-26 years, the respondents with frequent use of social media, exposure to social media and addictiveness to social media were 82.0%, 74% and 65% respectively. Age, faculty, department, religion and ethnicity were the factors associated with use of social media while academic year, faculty, department and ethnicity were the factors associated with exposure to social media and faculty, department, religion and CGPA were also associated with addictiveness to social media. Department, CGPA and religion were the predictors of influence on the use of social media among the respondents. MBBS students had 13% less likelihood of having high addictiveness to social media than the other students with p= 0.009 [OR=0.87, 95% CI (0.304 -0.842)].

Majority of the respondents with CGPA of 1.00-3.40 have 42% less likelihood of having high addictiveness to social media compared to other students with p=0.022 [OR=0.58, 95% CI (0.375-0.925)]. Islam had 46% less likelihood of having high addictiveness to social media than the other students with p=0.014 [OR=0.54, 95% CI (0.334-0.881)] but none was significant for frequent user and exposure to social media on logistic regression but none was significant for frequent user and exposure to social media.

Conclusion: There was high frequent users and addictiveness to social media among the respondents while the exposure to social media was low. Age, faculty, department, religion and ethnicity were the factors associated with use of social media while academic year, faculty, department and ethnicity were the factors associated with exposure to social media and faculty, department, religion and CGPA were also associated with addictiveness to social media. The predictors of influence of social media on academic performance among the respondents were department, CGPA and religion. There is need for counseling to the low academic performing students to enable them improves their CGPA.