Self-Presentation 2.0

Enhanced innovations in Internet and social media applications, especially the development of Web 2.0, have made Facebook so appealing to users, especially young adults who spend hours making themselves endearing to others. Nigeria is one of the countries with the largest population of Facebook users in Africa, however, limited evidence exists from Nigerian perspective. To close this void, this work explored the links of 380 young university students' self-presentation behaviour on Facebook. Goffman's self-presentation model approach was adopted and the findings show intense Facebooking is significantly correlated with low self-esteem. Also, a significant but negative correlation was found between users' estimated number of Facebook friends and self-esteem, suggesting that the larger the size of an individual user's Facebook friends estimate the lower his or her self-esteem can be. Because this study was exploratory, follow-up studies should adopt mixed methods to provide further evidence on the effects of low self-esteem arising from youth's Facebook use behaviours.