Abstract
This study determined the influence of social media usage on the senior secondary schools student’s academic performance in Dala Local Government area of Kano State, Nigeria. The design of the study was correlational, given a population of 14,235 senior secondary schools students from 29 secondary schools in Dala Local Government Area, Kano State; the sample of 378 students (males = 55.02%, females = 44.98%, SS1, = 30%, SSII = 37% and SS III 33%) were drawn from the 7 selected schools using systematic and stratified random sampling techniques. The researchers’ made questionnaire titled: Students Social Media Usage and Educational Impact Scale (SSMUEIS), which has 0.82 reliability co-efficient with the aid of the split halve technique, used to examine the social media usage among the students. And the students second term examination results (2018/2019 session) in English language was used to ascertained the academic performance of the students. The research question intends to determine the social media application students are more frequently exposed to. The first hypothesis determined the influence of social media usage on the academic performance of the students; whereas the second one tested the gender difference of the influence of the social media usage on the academic performance of the students. The research question was answered using descriptive statistics (using frequency counts and percentages), while the first hypothesis was tested using Pearson Product Moment Correlation (PPMC) and t-test and Chi-square technique for the last hypothesis, all at 0.05 level of significance. The findings of the study reveals that the students use facebook more frequently (53.17%) than other social media applications, male students use social media more frequently (73.55%) than their female counterpart; there was significant gender difference in academic performance of the students exposed to social media (P= .001) as males performs better than females; and that social media usage influences the student’s academic performance negatively (P= .010). Hence it is concluded that the excessive use of social media is negatively influencing the student’s academic performance, and therefore recommended (among others) that the students should developed the cognitive and intuitive ability to analyze how much time they should be spending with social media, in order to strike a balance between their academic activities and chatting. And that they should devote more time on research, e-learning and academic activities more than chatting while using social media

Keywords
Social media, Academic performance and Senior Secondary School Students