ABSTRACT: The study is on the thrust to examine how new media particularly social media has disconnected and undermined social capital. This study was anchored on the Putnam’s Theory of Time Displacement and Technological Determinism Theory. The research used survey method while the research population is students of Post Graduate School of the University of Ilorin. The research adopted multi-stage sampling method to select respondents from the Post Graduate School. Five (5) colleges/faculties out of ten (10) colleges/faculties i.e Arts, Science, Engineering & Technology, CIS and Agriculture were simple randomly selected. In each college/faculty selected, one (1) department was drawn and in each department selected, 10 PGD, 10 MSc and 5 PhD students were accidentally selected. Therefore, 25 respondents were drawn from each department and the same steps were repeated in other faculties and departments making a total of 125 respondents that were drawn in all. The main data collection instrument for this research was questionnaire out of 125 copies of questionnaire administered 112 copies that were returned and analyzed using frequency and percentage tables. Findings show that substantial numbers of the respondents (88.4%) use social media lots in their everyday life. Also, many of the respondents (52.6%) were highly aware of the concept of social capital. Many respondents (67%) agreed that social media seems disconnecting people from social capital and other physical engagement.  It was recommended that, there is need for social media users to understand why they are joining the social media in the first place so that they would not be overcome by any negative impacts but rather use these sites for maximum benefit. Also, people should also ensure that they maintain their existing offline relationships while creating new value through new media.

Keywords: Anti-social media, social media, new media, disconnects us, social capital

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