The Influence of Social Media Language on the Writing Skills of Secondary School Students in Ogun State

The pervasive use of social media platforms among Nigerian adolescents has generated concern among educators and linguists about the potential transfer of informal digital writing conventions into formal academic writing contexts. This study investigates the influence of social media language on the writing skills of Senior Secondary School students in Ogun State, examining the frequency and types of social media-influenced features appearing in examined essay writing. A purposive sample of two hundred essay scripts from the 2023 internal examinations of six secondary schools in Ogun State was analysed for the presence of abbreviated spellings, emoticon references, hashtag-like insertions, lowercase proper nouns, and other digital writing conventions. The analysis framework draws on recent digital literacy and language transfer research. Results show that social media-influenced features appear in eighty-one percent of the analysed scripts, with abbreviated spellings the most frequent category. Female students show significantly higher rates of certain abbreviation patterns, while students who self-report higher daily social media use show higher overall feature frequency. The study distinguishes between features that reflect simple orthographic transfer and those that suggest deeper grammatical simplification, arguing that the latter are more pedagogically concerning. Teacher interviews reveal widespread awareness of the problem but limited evidence of structured curricular responses. The study recommends explicit contrastive instruction comparing digital and academic register conventions in Senior Secondary English curricula in Ogun State. Keywords: social media language, writing skills, secondary students, register transfer, Ogun State.