Nigeria’s Earliest Netizens Are Growing Up and Their Playground is Evolving Fast

By John Oguntiloye

If you were an early social media user in Nigeria, chances are your first experience was on 2go, Eskimi, or Facebook. Those platforms taught an entire generation how to be online, how to perform and hide identity, how to belong, and how to be seen. On 2go, people stayed up all night chatting, jumping from one room to another so as to move from amateur to junior and eventually to master. There was a hierarchy, an unspoken competition, and a strong sense of belonging. On Facebook, creativity often meant bending spelling rules, experimenting with typography, and announcing one’s digital presence through exaggerated style. In those days, “Oluwa” was spelt “Holuwa,” “Ayomide” was stylized as “Hayhormide”, or something along those lines. It was a travesty of spelling and linguistics. It was chaotic and playful. Though that phase now feels distant, it is not because social media has changed beyond recognition, but because its first inhabitants have. This article is not about teenage nostalgia. It is about what came after those early days; it is about what is happening now.

To give the intent of this article a safe landing, we must start from what we can call the beginning. Internet access in Nigeria expanded rapidly between the late 2000s and early 2010s. By 2010, an estimated 38 million people, which is roughly 24% of the population, were using the internet, a dramatic increase from under 10% just a few years earlier. Among other things, access to the internet enabled people to do a number of things, one of which was interacting on social media. In those early days, what users did with social media was connect and interact with friends. Though it offered more, at its core, social media was basically about connecting with people. But like everything, there was a sudden switch in the way people used social media. From connecting with people, social media shifted toward creating for people, selling to them, and eventually earning from one’s creation. To be a social media or content creator suggests there are consumers for whom you create. These consumers matter so much to this article. So, who are they?

To answer this question, let me establish that as of 2007, there were fewer than 40,000 Facebook users in Nigeria. By 2009, the number had grown to around 212,000, and by early 2010, it had increased to roughly 657,000, rising later that same year to about 1.8 million users. Most of these earliest adopters were overwhelmingly teenagers, undergraduates, and people in their early twenties. When other social media platforms started unfolding, these young people who had cut their digital teeth on Facebook started migrating to other platforms. No available statistical record proves this, but my assumption is that most of them were between the ages of 15–25 at the time of joining. The implication of this was that, at that stage of life, time felt abundant, responsibilities were limited, and social media served primarily as a space for entertainment, experimentation, and social bonding. And so, the type of content users created and engaged with reflected this reality.

By 2020, a huge percentage of these early social media users had aged 30 and above. And due to life having happened to them, they had a limited social media presence. Even among those who maintained an online presence, they only posted once in a while. But COVID-19 upended the entire dynamics. The long months of lockdown made everybody bored and social media interaction essential. Adults that would normally not care started registering their presence on social media. Even low-tech conservative churches started actively using social media to livestream their programmes. But interestingly, even though COVID-19 made a significant adult population become more active on social media, a large proportion of social media engagement still comes from young people between 15 and 35 years old.

This age distribution can be classified into two. The first consists of those between the ages of 15 and 25, and the second consists of those between the ages of 26 and 35. One obvious reality is that those in the second age distribution (26–35) are gradually finding their way into the world of work, family, parenting, and more. This observation matters because media consumption has always been closely tied to life stages. Developmental psychologists have long argued that interests evolve as individuals move through adulthood. Erik Erikson’s theory of psychosocial development, for instance, suggests that as people age, they become more concerned with stability, productivity, contribution, and meaning, rather than exploration and identity play, which dominate earlier years. In contrast, research on younger audiences consistently shows a preference for immediacy, experimentation, humour, and trend-based participation. Studies on youth culture and media, such as Danah Boyd’s work on networked publics, highlight how younger users treat social platforms as spaces of identity formation, peer validation, and rapid cultural turnover. What matters most at that stage is not depth, but relevance – being current, visible, and connected.

What this means in practical terms is that as social media users age, something will change about their interaction and consumption of these digital platforms. This probably explains why the engagement rates of popular creators in Nigeria are dropping. In the last two years, no content creator has attained the sort of notoriety that creators like Mr Macaroni, Sabinus, or even Layi have. Though new creators are coming up daily, none of them has blown up in the way the mentioned creators blew up, especially in the last two years. But this is not just about social media creators alone. In the last two years, the numbers that Afrobeats artistes used to get have been dropping. I recently did a personal explorative study and found that most Nigerian songs that gathered over 80 million views on YouTube were mostly songs released in 2016/2017 and 2022/2023. A lot of factors may be responsible for this, and this will be the subject of another article. But I will not rule out the possibility that ageing demographics may no longer be connecting with the Afrobeats genre because it no longer satisfies their urge.

The tension now playing out across social media sits precisely at this intersection. A section of the dominant content consumer base is already aging, and in another five to ten years, their priorities will shift even further. The kinds of content that once grabbed their attention effortlessly will compete with work, family, fatigue, and a growing desire for substance.

This trend is also probably why X, in the last few years, has gradually evolved from jokes, skits, fleeting trends, and entertainment to more discussions about politics, religion, economics, gender, mental health, and national identity. I am not suggesting that fleeting trends and conversations around entertainment are no longer happening on these platforms; all I am saying is that there seems to be a gradual shift. Discussions on the recent tax policy are a good example. A lot of people within the 26–35 demographic are directly affected by the policy since they are now in the world of work. So it is expected that the conversation about the policy will become a trendy public conversation.

Historically, no dominant media form has remained the same when its core audience has aged. Radio, television, and print media have had to evolve or are trying to keep up as their audience needs change faster than their formats could adjust to. Which brings us to the questions that sit quietly beneath all of this: as today’s dominant population on social media grows older, what kind of content will hold their attention? Will social media spaces increasingly belong to users under 25, with older audiences gradually disengaging or fragmenting? Or will platforms evolve to accommodate a more mature, reflective user base? And perhaps most significantly, is it possible that a new form of media will emerge and slowly displace social media as we know it today? These are not questions with immediate answers. But the context for answering them is already unfolding before us.

Nigeria’s earliest netizens are growing up. What we once created for fun may now demand thought, purpose, and meaning. Are you ready for the next era?

John Oguntiloye writes from Lagos. He is a Digital and Multimedia Associate at the Wole Soyinka Centre for Investigative Journalism.