Social media platforms enhances digital ways of communication. It has turned human interaction into global community and it involves interactions on different scales.  They can be through text messages, live streaming, broadcasting, images, videos, motion picture or audio and video calls. Social media has become an emerging trend associated with different kinds of people and age groups, especially the youth. Social media influence youth’ lives in diverse way.  Specifically, this study assessed the relevance of social media on livelihood related activities among the rural youths, frequency of usage of available social media platforms on livelihood related activities, extent of factors influencing usage of social media and assessment of severity of constraints to social media platforms usage of the Respondents.

  A multistage sampling technique was employed in purposefully selecting respondents for this study based on youthfulness and rurality of residence. Descriptive statistics such as frequency counts, percentages, mean, Weighted Mean Score (WMS) and rank were used to measure the variables. Pearson Product Moment Correlation, Chi-square and ANOVA were used to test the hypotheses of the study.

The findings revealed that the mean age of the respondents was 29 years, 54.1% of the respondents were male, single (51.9%). WhatsApp (82.3%) emerged as the most frequently used social media platform for livelihood related activities followed by facebook (75.8%), whereas linkedln and zoom were less frequently used. The major emerging livelihood activities associated with social media included sales of recharge cards and data subscriptions (73.6%), followed by phone charging business (69.7%) and sales of phone accessories (68.0%). Major constraints to usage of social media platforms were poor level of digital literacy (WMS=1.23) and poor power supply (WMS=1.14). Chi-square analysis revealed that there is significant and positive relationship between marital status (χ² = 173.900, p < 0.01), religion (χ² = 149.800, p < 0.01), level of literacy (χ² = 45.896, p <0.01) and relevance of usage of social media platforms on their livelihood related activities.

The study concluded that social media has become a central tool for communication, networking, information sharing and economic engagement and income generating activities among youths in rural area. The study therefore recommends that improved rural communication infrastructure, affordable internet services, enhanced digital literacy programmes and policies that promote the effective use of social media for sustainable rural livelihood development be encouraged

Keywords: Relevance, Usage, Social Media Platforms, Livelihood Activities, Rural Youths.