The study examined the effects of adolescents’ exposure to sexual contents through social media in
Nigeria. Data was gathered using quantitative structured face-to-face interviews among 305 literate
adolescents. They were distributed using Nigerian age-sex ratio of 51 and 49 between male and female
respectively. One adolescent per house/building was purposively interviewed within randomly chosen
streets in the locations of study. The study locations consist of densely populated urban areas in Lagos
metropolis, Nigeria. The locations were chosen due to high proportion of adolescents in the areas
according to the country’s census results. Data were analysed using univariate and multivariate analyses.
Common social media identified among the respondents includes Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Flickr,
Instagram and LinkedIn. The result also revealed that users of social media in age group 10-14 years are
4.614 times more likely to be exposed to sexual activity at P-value = 0.000. Adolescent users of social
media with primary education are 26.953 times more likely to be involved in sexual activity (P-value =
0.000). Those who use social media like Twitter, Facebook, YouTube and Instagram are 6.932, 4.630,
3.566 and 2.682 times (respectively) more likely to be exposed to sexual activity compared to their
counterparts that use other forms of media. The paper posits that it is inimical not to monitor adolescents’
exposure to sexual contents and censor the scenes available on social media gadgets. The study
recommends that sexuality education must be popularised in order to stem the risk of HIV/AIDS among
the group studied.