Entertainment, Information and Creativity: Motivational Drivers of TikTok and Snapchat Use among Nigerian Students

This article examines the principal motivations that drive Mass Communication students to use TikTok and Snapchat. The study draws on a descriptive survey of 261 students at Federal Polytechnic Bauchi during the 2024–2025 academic session. The research question addressed is what primary motivations underlie students’ engagement with these platforms. Analysis of the saved student dataset shows that entertainment and social connection are the most frequently endorsed motives, with substantial proportions also reporting information seeking, creative self-expression and skill acquisition as salient drivers. Self-reported learning outcomes were notable: 74.7% indicated they had acquired video editing or media production skills from TikTok and 82.8% reported similar gains from Snapchat. The methods combine standard descriptive statistics, cross-tabulations and factor-oriented interpretation to identify dominant motivational clusters. The findings are interpreted through the lens of Uses and Gratifications Theory which foregrounds user agency in media choice; platform affordances such as algorithmic recommendation and ephemerality are shown to shape the relative prominence of particular gratifications. Pedagogical implications are discussed. The article argues that educators and curriculum designers ought to recognise students’ instrumental use of short-form and ephemeral platforms while also attending to digital wellbeing and ethical practice. Recommendations include structured micro-learning assignments that harness students’ creativity and institutional media-literacy interventions to mitigate distraction and privacy risks. The study contributes empirical evidence from a polytechnic context in northern Nigeria and speaks to broader debates about short-form video platforms as sites of informal skill acquisition and social interaction.     Received:  09 July  2026 / Accepted: 31 August 2026 / Published: September 2026