ABSTRACT

This study investigated social media usage and internet crime among undergraduate students in Abia State. Four research questions and four null hypotheses guided the study. The study adopted a correlational research design. The population for the study comprises 6900 undergraduate students in public universities in Abia State. The sample for the study consisted of 690 respondents (289 males and 401 females) drawn through multistage sampling technique from undergraduate students in public Universities in Abia State. Simple random sampling technique was used to select two (2) public Universities out of the five listed in Abia State. Two instruments were developed by the researcher and used for the study. They are: Social Media Usage Questionnaire (SMUQ) and Internet Crime Questionnaire (ICQ). The face validation of the instrument was carried out by three experts from Educational Psychology and Counselling, Measurement and Evaluation Departments, all from Michael Okpara University of Agriculture, Umudike. The data obtained through the trial testing were used to determine the internal consistency of the items which yielded reliability indices r = .73 for SMUQ and r = .69for ICQ respectively. The data collected were analyzed using Pearson’s Product Moment Correlation Coefficient, Pearson’s r, R² (coefficient of determination) while linear regression was used to test the null hypotheses at 0.05 level of significance. The result revealed the following findings: This means that social media usage has a positive moderate prediction on the undergraduate student’s crime because 27.0% of the variance of the students’ crime can be explained by their social media usage. This means that social media usage has a positive moderate prediction on the undergraduate student’s crime because 27.0% of the variance of the students’ crime can be explained by their social media usage. There is significant relationship between social media usage and internet crime among undergraduate students. Among the educational implications was that the study could provide supportive frameworks from which one can explore the relationship existing among social media and criminality among university undergraduate students. It was thus recommended that parents or guardians and teachers should educate their children/students on the relationships that could exist among social media usage and internet crime and help in educating them accordingly.