ABSTRACTBackground. Many youths have adopted networking media for communication with friends, family members and the general public.Objective. This study examined the participation of youths in programmes and in Nigeria using networking media.Method. A total of 200 Nigerian youths were sampled from four Nigerian universities. A structured questionnaire was administered to the respondents and 190 (95%) were properly completed.Results. The major networking media used by Nigerian youths are Facebook, Google+, 2go, Skype and Twitter. They are mainly used for social interaction, study, teaching and learning, dissemination and research and academic purposes. The youths rarely use these sites to participate in governance. The major challenges faced in the use of networking are a lack of control on the activities of the users, power failures, the high cost of accessing the Internet, and poor Internet connectivity. Nigerian youths employ networking to aggregate their views in such environmental issues, health, power supply, education, human capital development and security issues. The youths believe that networking has improved participatory democracy in education and human capital development, health, environmental issues, power supply and budget monitoring.Conclusion. Social networking has dramatically improved the participation of youths in national discourses. The results of the study can serve a useful guide on the use of networking services for participatory democracy by youths in developing countries.INTRODUCTIONIn Nigeria, the long period of military dictatorship denied citizens the opportunity of participation in and programmes. This resulted in the growth and development of the Nigerian economy without a corresponding improvement in the overall welfare of Nigerian citizens (National Planning Commission, 2011). With the return to civil democracy in 1999, greater opportunities were offered to the citizens to participate in activities. President Abraham Lincoln has defined democracy in his Gettysburg address government of the by the and for the people (Epstein, 2011). This implies participation of the in issues that concern them.The issue of participation is critical to the success of every democratic globally. In the foreword to the World Bank Learning Group's publication on participation, the idea of participation was defined a through which stakeholders influence and share control over development initiatives and the decision and resources which affect them (World Bank, 1996, p. xi). The African Community Publishing and Development Trust (2006, p. 5) views participation being involved in a programme as individual and a community in decision making at each step of development process.This definition recalls Arnstein's concept of the ladder of participation developed in 1969, which listed eight levels of citizen participation. Burns, Hambleton and Hogett (1994) later modified Arnstein's ladder of participation and proposed a ladder of citizen power which enumerated factors that encourage or discourage citizen participation. This theory hinges the success or failure of citizen participation on information available to the citizen and the nature of consultations deployed. It is upon this theory that this present study is framed. This is because networking media are all about providing adequate and speedy information to the citizens.Participation can be political or (Gaventa & Valderrama, 1999); it can also be active or passive (Chikerema, 2013). Political participation is concerned with taking part in the process of formulation, passage and implementation of public policies (Parry, Mosley & Day, 1992, p. 16); while participation involves the community or sectors (Gaventa & Valderrama, 1999). …