Social Media Language and the Evolution of Nigerian Youth Slang: A Study of Twitter and Instagram Users in Lagos

This study investigates the linguistic features and social functions of Nigerian youth slang as it evolves through social media use on Twitter and Instagram among young adults in Lagos State, South West Nigeria. Nigerian youth slang, often referred to as Naija street language, has undergone rapid innovation in the social media era, blending Nigerian Pidgin English, Yoruba, Igbo, and English in creative and contextually specific ways that reflect the cultural dynamism of urban Nigerian youth identity. The study employs a nethnographic methodology, collecting a corpus of 500 tweets and Instagram captions from popular Lagos-based youth accounts between June and September 2023. Lexical analysis identifies the dominant word formation processes including blending, acronymy, borrowing, and semantic extension. Pragmatic analysis examines the social functions of slang in performing group membership, humor, social commentary, and digital identity. Findings reveal that Lagos youth slang is not simply imported from global hip-hop culture but involves substantial creative adaptation of indigenous linguistic resources, particularly Yoruba idiomatic expressions, into digital communicative contexts. Generational, gender, and class differences in slang use are identified as significant variables. The study also explores how viral social media moments accelerate slang diffusion across Nigerian cities beyond Lagos. The research argues for greater sociolinguistic attention to digital youth language as a living dimension of Nigerian English development. Recommendations include the use of social media corpus data in Nigerian English language teaching research. Keywords: Nigerian youth slang, social media language, Lagos, sociolinguistics, Nigerian English.