social media addiction hypothesis

A review of theories and models applied in studies of social media addiction and implications for future research

Affiliations.

• 1 School of Information, The University of Texas at Austin, USA. Electronic address: [email protected].
• 2 School of Information, The University of Texas at Austin, USA. Electronic address: [email protected].
• PMID: 33268185
• DOI: 10.1016/j.addbeh.2020.106699

With the increasing use of social media, the addictive use of this new technology also grows. Previous studies found that addictive social media use is associated with negative consequences such as reduced productivity, unhealthy social relationships, and reduced life-satisfaction. However, a holistic theoretical understanding of how social media addiction develops is still lacking, which impedes practical research that aims at designing educational and other intervention programs to prevent social media addiction. In this study, we reviewed 25 distinct theories/models that guided the research design of 55 empirical studies of social media addiction to identify theoretical perspectives and constructs that have been examined to explain the development of social media addiction. Limitations of the existing theoretical frameworks were identified, and future research areas are proposed.

Keywords: Facebook addiction; Internet addiction; Literature review; Problematic use; Social media addiction; Theoretical framework.

Copyright © 2020 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Publication types

• Behavior, Addictive*
• Internet Addiction Disorder
• Interpersonal Relations
• Social Media*

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Please note you do not have access to teaching notes, exploring the mechanism of social media addiction: an empirical study from wechat users.

Internet Research

ISSN : 1066-2243

Article publication date: 12 May 2020

Issue publication date: 22 June 2020

The problematic use of social media progressively worsens among a large proportion of users. However, the theory-driven investigation into social media addiction behavior remains far from adequate. Among the countable information system studies on the dark side of social media, the focus lies on users' subjective feelings and perceived value. The technical features of the social media platform have been ignored. Accordingly, this study explores the formation of social media addiction considering the perspectives of users and social media per se on the basis of extended motivational framework and attachment theory.

Design/methodology/approach

This study investigates the formation of social media addiction with particular focus on WeChat. A field survey with 505 subjects of WeChat users was conducted to investigate the research model.

Results demonstrate that social media addiction is determined by individuals' emotional and functional attachment to the platform. These attachments are in turn influenced by motivational (perceived enjoyment and social interaction) and technical (informational support, system quality and personalization) factors.

Originality/value

First, this study explains the underlying mechanism of how users develop social media addiction. Second, it highlights the importance of users' motivations and emotional dependence at this point. It also focuses on the technical system of the platform that plays a key role in the formation of addictive usage behavior. Third, it extends attachment theory to the context of social media addictive behavior.

• Attachment theory
• Socio-technical framework
• Social media

Cao, X. , Gong, M. , Yu, L. and Dai, B. (2020), "Exploring the mechanism of social media addiction: an empirical study from WeChat users", Internet Research , Vol. 30 No. 4, pp. 1305-1328. https://doi.org/10.1108/INTR-08-2019-0347

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Effects of Social Media Use on Psychological Well-Being: A Mediated Model

Dragana ostic.

1 School of Finance and Economics, Jiangsu University, Zhenjiang, China

Sikandar Ali Qalati

Belem barbosa.

2 Research Unit of Governance, Competitiveness, and Public Policies (GOVCOPP), Center for Economics and Finance (cef.up), School of Economics and Management, University of Porto, Porto, Portugal

Syed Mir Muhammad Shah

3 Department of Business Administration, Sukkur Institute of Business Administration (IBA) University, Sukkur, Pakistan

Esthela Galvan Vela

4 CETYS Universidad, Tijuana, Mexico

Ahmed Muhammad Herzallah

5 Department of Business Administration, Al-Quds University, Jerusalem, Israel

6 Business School, Shandong University, Weihai, China

Associated Data

The raw data supporting the conclusions of this article will be made available by the authors, without undue reservation.

The growth in social media use has given rise to concerns about the impacts it may have on users' psychological well-being. This paper's main objective is to shed light on the effect of social media use on psychological well-being. Building on contributions from various fields in the literature, it provides a more comprehensive study of the phenomenon by considering a set of mediators, including social capital types (i.e., bonding social capital and bridging social capital), social isolation, and smartphone addiction. The paper includes a quantitative study of 940 social media users from Mexico, using structural equation modeling (SEM) to test the proposed hypotheses. The findings point to an overall positive indirect impact of social media usage on psychological well-being, mainly due to the positive effect of bonding and bridging social capital. The empirical model's explanatory power is 45.1%. This paper provides empirical evidence and robust statistical analysis that demonstrates both positive and negative effects coexist, helping to reconcile the inconsistencies found so far in the literature.

Introduction

The use of social media has grown substantially in recent years (Leong et al., 2019 ; Kemp, 2020 ). Social media refers to “the websites and online tools that facilitate interactions between users by providing them opportunities to share information, opinions, and interest” (Swar and Hameed, 2017 , p. 141). Individuals use social media for many reasons, including entertainment, communication, and searching for information. Notably, adolescents and young adults are spending an increasing amount of time on online networking sites, e-games, texting, and other social media (Twenge and Campbell, 2019 ). In fact, some authors (e.g., Dhir et al., 2018 ; Tateno et al., 2019 ) have suggested that social media has altered the forms of group interaction and its users' individual and collective behavior around the world.

Consequently, there are increased concerns regarding the possible negative impacts associated with social media usage addiction (Swar and Hameed, 2017 ; Kircaburun et al., 2020 ), particularly on psychological well-being (Chotpitayasunondh and Douglas, 2016 ; Jiao et al., 2017 ; Choi and Noh, 2019 ; Chatterjee, 2020 ). Smartphones sometimes distract their users from relationships and social interaction (Chotpitayasunondh and Douglas, 2016 ; Li et al., 2020a ), and several authors have stressed that the excessive use of social media may lead to smartphone addiction (Swar and Hameed, 2017 ; Leong et al., 2019 ), primarily because of the fear of missing out (Reer et al., 2019 ; Roberts and David, 2020 ). Social media usage has been associated with anxiety, loneliness, and depression (Dhir et al., 2018 ; Reer et al., 2019 ), social isolation (Van Den Eijnden et al., 2016 ; Whaite et al., 2018 ), and “phubbing,” which refers to the extent to which an individual uses, or is distracted by, their smartphone during face-to-face communication with others (Chotpitayasunondh and Douglas, 2016 ; Jiao et al., 2017 ; Choi and Noh, 2019 ; Chatterjee, 2020 ).

However, social media use also contributes to building a sense of connectedness with relevant others (Twenge and Campbell, 2019 ), which may reduce social isolation. Indeed, social media provides several ways to interact both with close ties, such as family, friends, and relatives, and weak ties, including coworkers, acquaintances, and strangers (Chen and Li, 2017 ), and plays a key role among people of all ages as they exploit their sense of belonging in different communities (Roberts and David, 2020 ). Consequently, despite the fears regarding the possible negative impacts of social media usage on well-being, there is also an increasing number of studies highlighting social media as a new communication channel (Twenge and Campbell, 2019 ; Barbosa et al., 2020 ), stressing that it can play a crucial role in developing one's presence, identity, and reputation, thus facilitating social interaction, forming and maintaining relationships, and sharing ideas (Carlson et al., 2016 ), which consequently may be significantly correlated to social support (Chen and Li, 2017 ; Holliman et al., 2021 ). Interestingly, recent studies (e.g., David et al., 2018 ; Bano et al., 2019 ; Barbosa et al., 2020 ) have suggested that the impact of smartphone usage on psychological well-being depends on the time spent on each type of application and the activities that users engage in.

Hence, the literature provides contradictory cues regarding the impacts of social media on users' well-being, highlighting both the possible negative impacts and the social enhancement it can potentially provide. In line with views on the need to further investigate social media usage (Karikari et al., 2017 ), particularly regarding its societal implications (Jiao et al., 2017 ), this paper argues that there is an urgent need to further understand the impact of the time spent on social media on users' psychological well-being, namely by considering other variables that mediate and further explain this effect.

One of the relevant perspectives worth considering is that provided by social capital theory, which is adopted in this paper. Social capital theory has previously been used to study how social media usage affects psychological well-being (e.g., Bano et al., 2019 ). However, extant literature has so far presented only partial models of associations that, although statistically acceptable and contributing to the understanding of the scope of social networks, do not provide as comprehensive a vision of the phenomenon as that proposed within this paper. Furthermore, the contradictory views, suggesting both negative (e.g., Chotpitayasunondh and Douglas, 2016 ; Van Den Eijnden et al., 2016 ; Jiao et al., 2017 ; Whaite et al., 2018 ; Choi and Noh, 2019 ; Chatterjee, 2020 ) and positive impacts (Carlson et al., 2016 ; Chen and Li, 2017 ; Twenge and Campbell, 2019 ) of social media on psychological well-being, have not been adequately explored.

Given this research gap, this paper's main objective is to shed light on the effect of social media use on psychological well-being. As explained in detail in the next section, this paper explores the mediating effect of bonding and bridging social capital. To provide a broad view of the phenomenon, it also considers several variables highlighted in the literature as affecting the relationship between social media usage and psychological well-being, namely smartphone addiction, social isolation, and phubbing. The paper utilizes a quantitative study conducted in Mexico, comprising 940 social media users, and uses structural equation modeling (SEM) to test a set of research hypotheses.

This article provides several contributions. First, it adds to existing literature regarding the effect of social media use on psychological well-being and explores the contradictory indications provided by different approaches. Second, it proposes a conceptual model that integrates complementary perspectives on the direct and indirect effects of social media use. Third, it offers empirical evidence and robust statistical analysis that demonstrates that both positive and negative effects coexist, helping resolve the inconsistencies found so far in the literature. Finally, this paper provides insights on how to help reduce the potential negative effects of social media use, as it demonstrates that, through bridging and bonding social capital, social media usage positively impacts psychological well-being. Overall, the article offers valuable insights for academics, practitioners, and society in general.

The remainder of this paper is organized as follows. Section Literature Review presents a literature review focusing on the factors that explain the impact of social media usage on psychological well-being. Based on the literature review, a set of hypotheses are defined, resulting in the proposed conceptual model, which includes both the direct and indirect effects of social media usage on psychological well-being. Section Research Methodology explains the methodological procedures of the research, followed by the presentation and discussion of the study's results in section Results. Section Discussion is dedicated to the conclusions and includes implications, limitations, and suggestions for future research.

Literature Review

Putnam ( 1995 , p. 664–665) defined social capital as “features of social life – networks, norms, and trust – that enable participants to act together more effectively to pursue shared objectives.” Li and Chen ( 2014 , p. 117) further explained that social capital encompasses “resources embedded in one's social network, which can be assessed and used for instrumental or expressive returns such as mutual support, reciprocity, and cooperation.”

Putnam ( 1995 , 2000 ) conceptualized social capital as comprising two dimensions, bridging and bonding, considering the different norms and networks in which they occur. Bridging social capital refers to the inclusive nature of social interaction and occurs when individuals from different origins establish connections through social networks. Hence, bridging social capital is typically provided by heterogeneous weak ties (Li and Chen, 2014 ). This dimension widens individual social horizons and perspectives and provides extended access to resources and information. Bonding social capital refers to the social and emotional support each individual receives from his or her social networks, particularly from close ties (e.g., family and friends).

Overall, social capital is expected to be positively associated with psychological well-being (Bano et al., 2019 ). Indeed, Williams ( 2006 ) stressed that interaction generates affective connections, resulting in positive impacts, such as emotional support. The following sub-sections use the lens of social capital theory to explore further the relationship between the use of social media and psychological well-being.

Social Media Use, Social Capital, and Psychological Well-Being

The effects of social media usage on social capital have gained increasing scholarly attention, and recent studies have highlighted a positive relationship between social media use and social capital (Brown and Michinov, 2019 ; Tefertiller et al., 2020 ). Li and Chen ( 2014 ) hypothesized that the intensity of Facebook use by Chinese international students in the United States was positively related to social capital forms. A longitudinal survey based on the quota sampling approach illustrated the positive effects of social media use on the two social capital dimensions (Chen and Li, 2017 ). Abbas and Mesch ( 2018 ) argued that, as Facebook usage increases, it will also increase users' social capital. Karikari et al. ( 2017 ) also found positive effects of social media use on social capital. Similarly, Pang ( 2018 ) studied Chinese students residing in Germany and found positive effects of social networking sites' use on social capital, which, in turn, was positively associated with psychological well-being. Bano et al. ( 2019 ) analyzed the 266 students' data and found positive effects of WhatsApp use on social capital forms and the positive effect of social capital on psychological well-being, emphasizing the role of social integration in mediating this positive effect.

Kim and Kim ( 2017 ) stressed the importance of having a heterogeneous network of contacts, which ultimately enhances the potential social capital. Overall, the manifest and social relations between people from close social circles (bonding social capital) and from distant social circles (bridging social capital) are strengthened when they promote communication, social support, and the sharing of interests, knowledge, and skills, which are shared with other members. This is linked to positive effects on interactions, such as acceptance, trust, and reciprocity, which are related to the individuals' health and psychological well-being (Bekalu et al., 2019 ), including when social media helps to maintain social capital between social circles that exist outside of virtual communities (Ellison et al., 2007 ).

Grounded on the above literature, this study proposes the following hypotheses:

• H1a: Social media use is positively associated with bonding social capital.
• H1b: Bonding social capital is positively associated with psychological well-being.
• H2a: Social media use is positively associated with bridging social capital.
• H2b: Bridging social capital is positively associated with psychological well-being.

Social Media Use, Social Isolation, and Psychological Well-Being

Social isolation is defined as “a deficit of personal relationships or being excluded from social networks” (Choi and Noh, 2019 , p. 4). The state that occurs when an individual lacks true engagement with others, a sense of social belonging, and a satisfying relationship is related to increased mortality and morbidity (Primack et al., 2017 ). Those who experience social isolation are deprived of social relationships and lack contact with others or involvement in social activities (Schinka et al., 2012 ). Social media usage has been associated with anxiety, loneliness, and depression (Dhir et al., 2018 ; Reer et al., 2019 ), and social isolation (Van Den Eijnden et al., 2016 ; Whaite et al., 2018 ). However, some recent studies have argued that social media use decreases social isolation (Primack et al., 2017 ; Meshi et al., 2020 ). Indeed, the increased use of social media platforms such as Facebook, WhatsApp, Instagram, and Twitter, among others, may provide opportunities for decreasing social isolation. For instance, the improved interpersonal connectivity achieved via videos and images on social media helps users evidence intimacy, attenuating social isolation (Whaite et al., 2018 ).

Chappell and Badger ( 1989 ) stated that social isolation leads to decreased psychological well-being, while Choi and Noh ( 2019 ) concluded that greater social isolation is linked to increased suicide risk. Schinka et al. ( 2012 ) further argued that, when individuals experience social isolation from siblings, friends, family, or society, their psychological well-being tends to decrease. Thus, based on the literature cited above, this study proposes the following hypotheses:

• H3a: Social media use is significantly associated with social isolation.
• H3b: Social isolation is negatively associated with psychological well-being.

Social Media Use, Smartphone Addiction, Phubbing, and Psychological Well-Being

Smartphone addiction refers to “an individuals' excessive use of a smartphone and its negative effects on his/her life as a result of his/her inability to control his behavior” (Gökçearslan et al., 2018 , p. 48). Regardless of its form, smartphone addiction results in social, medical, and psychological harm to people by limiting their ability to make their own choices (Chotpitayasunondh and Douglas, 2016 ). The rapid advancement of information and communication technologies has led to the concept of social media, e-games, and also to smartphone addiction (Chatterjee, 2020 ). The excessive use of smartphones for social media use, entertainment (watching videos, listening to music), and playing e-games is more common amongst people addicted to smartphones (Jeong et al., 2016 ). In fact, previous studies have evidenced the relationship between social use and smartphone addiction (Salehan and Negahban, 2013 ; Jeong et al., 2016 ; Swar and Hameed, 2017 ). In line with this, the following hypotheses are proposed:

• H4a: Social media use is positively associated with smartphone addiction.
• H4b: Smartphone addiction is negatively associated with psychological well-being.

While smartphones are bringing individuals closer, they are also, to some extent, pulling people apart (Tonacci et al., 2019 ). For instance, they can lead to individuals ignoring others with whom they have close ties or physical interactions; this situation normally occurs due to extreme smartphone use (i.e., at the dinner table, in meetings, at get-togethers and parties, and in other daily activities). This act of ignoring others is called phubbing and is considered a common phenomenon in communication activities (Guazzini et al., 2019 ; Chatterjee, 2020 ). Phubbing is also referred to as an act of snubbing others (Chatterjee, 2020 ). This term was initially used in May 2012 by an Australian advertising agency to describe the “growing phenomenon of individuals ignoring their families and friends who were called phubbee (a person who is a recipients of phubbing behavior) victim of phubber (a person who start phubbing her or his companion)” (Chotpitayasunondh and Douglas, 2018 ). Smartphone addiction has been found to be a determinant of phubbing (Kim et al., 2018 ). Other recent studies have also evidenced the association between smartphones and phubbing (Chotpitayasunondh and Douglas, 2016 ; Guazzini et al., 2019 ; Tonacci et al., 2019 ; Chatterjee, 2020 ). Vallespín et al. ( 2017 ) argued that phubbing behavior has a negative influence on psychological well-being and satisfaction. Furthermore, smartphone addiction is considered responsible for the development of new technologies. It may also negatively influence individual's psychological proximity (Chatterjee, 2020 ). Therefore, based on the above discussion and calls for the association between phubbing and psychological well-being to be further explored, this study proposes the following hypotheses:

• H5: Smartphone addiction is positively associated with phubbing.
• H6: Phubbing is negatively associated with psychological well-being.

Indirect Relationship Between Social Media Use and Psychological Well-Being

Beyond the direct hypotheses proposed above, this study investigates the indirect effects of social media use on psychological well-being mediated by social capital forms, social isolation, and phubbing. As described above, most prior studies have focused on the direct influence of social media use on social capital forms, social isolation, smartphone addiction, and phubbing, as well as the direct impact of social capital forms, social isolation, smartphone addiction, and phubbing on psychological well-being. Very few studies, however, have focused on and evidenced the mediating role of social capital forms, social isolation, smartphone addiction, and phubbing derived from social media use in improving psychological well-being (Chen and Li, 2017 ; Pang, 2018 ; Bano et al., 2019 ; Choi and Noh, 2019 ). Moreover, little is known about smartphone addiction's mediating role between social media use and psychological well-being. Therefore, this study aims to fill this gap in the existing literature by investigating the mediation of social capital forms, social isolation, and smartphone addiction. Further, examining the mediating influence will contribute to a more comprehensive understanding of social media use on psychological well-being via the mediating associations of smartphone addiction and psychological factors. Therefore, based on the above, we propose the following hypotheses (the conceptual model is presented in Figure 1 ):

Conceptual model.

• H7: (a) Bonding social capital; (b) bridging social capital; (c) social isolation; and (d) smartphone addiction mediate the relationship between social media use and psychological well-being.

Research Methodology

Sample procedure and online survey.

This study randomly selected students from universities in Mexico. We chose University students for the following reasons. First, students are considered the most appropriate sample for e-commerce studies, particularly in the social media context (Oghazi et al., 2018 ; Shi et al., 2018 ). Second, University students are considered to be frequent users and addicted to smartphones (Mou et al., 2017 ; Stouthuysen et al., 2018 ). Third, this study ensured that respondents were experienced, well-educated, and possessed sufficient knowledge of the drawbacks of social media and the extreme use of smartphones. A total sample size of 940 University students was ultimately achieved from the 1,500 students contacted, using a convenience random sampling approach, due both to the COVID-19 pandemic and budget and time constraints. Additionally, in order to test the model, a quantitative empirical study was conducted, using an online survey method to collect data. This study used a web-based survey distributed via social media platforms for two reasons: the COVID-19 pandemic; and to reach a large number of respondents (Qalati et al., 2021 ). Furthermore, online surveys are considered a powerful and authenticated tool for new research (Fan et al., 2021 ), while also representing a fast, simple, and less costly approach to collecting data (Dutot and Bergeron, 2016 ).

Data Collection Procedures and Respondent's Information

Data were collected by disseminating a link to the survey by e-mail and social network sites. Before presenting the closed-ended questionnaire, respondents were assured that their participation would remain voluntary, confidential, and anonymous. Data collection occurred from July 2020 to December 2020 (during the pandemic). It should be noted that, because data were collected during the pandemic, this may have had an influence on the results of the study. The reason for choosing a six-month lag time was to mitigate common method bias (CMB) (Li et al., 2020b ). In the present study, 1,500 students were contacted via University e-mail and social applications (Facebook, WhatsApp, and Instagram). We sent a reminder every month for 6 months (a total of six reminders), resulting in 940 valid responses. Thus, 940 (62.6% response rate) responses were used for hypotheses testing.

Table 1 reveals that, of the 940 participants, three-quarters were female (76.4%, n = 719) and nearly one-quarter (23.6%, n = 221) were male. Nearly half of the participants (48.8%, n = 459) were aged between 26 and 35 years, followed by 36 to 35 years (21.9%, n = 206), <26 (20.3%, n = 191), and over 45 (8.9%, n = 84). Approximately two-thirds (65%, n = 611) had a bachelor's degree or above, while one-third had up to 12 years of education. Regarding the daily frequency of using the Internet, nearly half (48.6%, n = 457) of the respondents reported between 5 and 8 h a day, and over one-quarter (27.2%) 9–12 h a day. Regarding the social media platforms used, over 38.5 and 39.6% reported Facebook and WhatsApp, respectively. Of the 940 respondents, only 22.1% reported Instagram (12.8%) and Twitter (9.2%). It should be noted, however, that the sample is predominantly female and well-educated.

Respondents' characteristics.

Measurement Items

The study used five-point Likert scales (1 = “strongly disagree;” 5 = “strongly agree”) to record responses.

Social Media Use

Social media use was assessed using four items adapted from Karikari et al. ( 2017 ). Sample items include “Social media is part of my everyday activity,” “Social media has become part of my daily life,” “I would be sorry if social media shut down,” and “I feel out of touch, when I have not logged onto social media for a while.” The adapted items had robust reliability and validity (CA = 783, CR = 0.857, AVE = 0.600).

Social Capital

Social capital was measured using a total of eight items, representing bonding social capital (four items) and bridging social capital (four items) adapted from Chan ( 2015 ). Sample construct items include: bonging social capital (“I am willing to spend time to support general community activities,” “I interact with people who are quite different from me”) and bridging social capital (“My social media community is a good place to be,” “Interacting with people on social media makes me want to try new things”). The adapted items had robust reliability and validity [bonding social capital (CA = 0.785, CR = 0.861, AVE = 0.608) and bridging social capital (CA = 0.834, CR = 0.883, AVE = 0.601)].

Social Isolation

Social isolation was assessed using three items from Choi and Noh ( 2019 ). Sample items include “I do not have anyone to play with,” “I feel alone from people,” and “I have no one I can trust.” This adapted scale had substantial reliability and validity (CA = 0.890, CR = 0.928, AVE = 0.811).

Smartphone Addiction

Smartphone addiction was assessed using five items taken from Salehan and Negahban ( 2013 ). Sample items include “I am always preoccupied with my mobile,” “Using my mobile phone keeps me relaxed,” and “I am not able to control myself from frequent use of mobile phones.” Again, these adapted items showed substantial reliability and validity (CA = 903, CR = 0.928, AVE = 0.809).

Phubbing was assessed using four items from Chotpitayasunondh and Douglas ( 2018 ). Sample items include: “I have conflicts with others because I am using my phone” and “I would rather pay attention to my phone than talk to others.” This construct also demonstrated significant reliability and validity (CA = 770, CR = 0.894, AVE = 0.809).

Psychological Well-Being

Psychological well-being was assessed using five items from Jiao et al. ( 2017 ). Sample items include “I lead a purposeful and meaningful life with the help of others,” “My social relationships are supportive and rewarding in social media,” and “I am engaged and interested in my daily on social media.” This study evidenced that this adapted scale had substantial reliability and validity (CA = 0.886, CR = 0.917, AVE = 0.688).

Data Analysis

Based on the complexity of the association between the proposed construct and the widespread use and acceptance of SmartPLS 3.0 in several fields (Hair et al., 2019 ), we utilized SEM, using SmartPLS 3.0, to examine the relationships between constructs. Structural equation modeling is a multivariate statistical analysis technique that is used to investigate relationships. Further, it is a combination of factor and multivariate regression analysis, and is employed to explore the relationship between observed and latent constructs.

SmartPLS 3.0 “is a more comprehensive software program with an intuitive graphical user interface to run partial least square SEM analysis, certainly has had a massive impact” (Sarstedt and Cheah, 2019 ). According to Ringle et al. ( 2015 ), this commercial software offers a wide range of algorithmic and modeling options, improved usability, and user-friendly and professional support. Furthermore, Sarstedt and Cheah ( 2019 ) suggested that structural equation models enable the specification of complex interrelationships between observed and latent constructs. Hair et al. ( 2019 ) argued that, in recent years, the number of articles published using partial least squares SEM has increased significantly in contrast to covariance-based SEM. In addition, partial least squares SEM using SmartPLS is more appealing for several scholars as it enables them to predict more complex models with several variables, indicator constructs, and structural paths, instead of imposing distributional assumptions on the data (Hair et al., 2019 ). Therefore, this study utilized the partial least squares SEM approach using SmartPLS 3.0.

Common Method Bias (CMB) Test

This study used the Kaiser–Meyer–Olkin (KMO) test to measure the sampling adequacy and ensure data suitability. The KMO test result was 0.874, which is greater than an acceptable threshold of 0.50 (Ali Qalati et al., 2021 ; Shrestha, 2021 ), and hence considered suitable for explanatory factor analysis. Moreover, Bartlett's test results demonstrated a significance level of 0.001, which is considered good as it is below the accepted threshold of 0.05.

The term CMB is associated with Campbell and Fiske ( 1959 ), who highlighted the importance of CMB and identified that a portion of variance in the research may be due to the methods employed. It occurs when all scales of the study are measured at the same time using a single questionnaire survey (Podsakoff and Organ, 1986 ); subsequently, estimates of the relationship among the variables might be distorted by the impacts of CMB. It is considered a serious issue that has a potential to “jeopardize” the validity of the study findings (Tehseen et al., 2017 ). There are several reasons for CMB: (1) it mainly occurs due to response “tendencies that raters can apply uniformity across the measures;” and (2) it also occurs due to similarities in the wording and structure of the survey items that produce similar results (Jordan and Troth, 2019 ). Harman's single factor test and a full collinearity approach were employed to ensure that the data was free from CMB (Tehseen et al., 2017 ; Jordan and Troth, 2019 ; Ali Qalati et al., 2021 ). Harman's single factor test showed a single factor explained only 22.8% of the total variance, which is far below the 50.0% acceptable threshold (Podsakoff et al., 2003 ).

Additionally, the variance inflation factor (VIF) was used, which is a measure of the amount of multicollinearity in a set of multiple regression constructs and also considered a way of detecting CMB (Hair et al., 2019 ). Hair et al. ( 2019 ) suggested that the acceptable threshold for the VIF is 3.0; as the computed VIFs for the present study ranged from 1.189 to 1.626, CMB is not a key concern (see Table 2 ). Bagozzi et al. ( 1991 ) suggested a correlation-matrix procedure to detect CMB. Common method bias is evident if correlation among the principle constructs is >0.9 (Tehseen et al., 2020 ); however, no values >0.9 were found in this study (see section Assessment of Measurement Model). This study used a two-step approach to evaluate the measurement model and the structural model.

Common method bias (full collinearity VIF).

Assessment of Measurement Model

Before conducting the SEM analysis, the measurement model was assessed to examine individual item reliability, internal consistency, and convergent and discriminant validity. Table 3 exhibits the values of outer loading used to measure an individual item's reliability (Hair et al., 2012 ). Hair et al. ( 2017 ) proposed that the value for each outer loading should be ≥0.7; following this principle, two items of phubbing (PHUB3—I get irritated if others ask me to get off my phone and talk to them; PHUB4—I use my phone even though I know it irritated others) were removed from the analysis Hair et al. ( 2019 ). According to Nunnally ( 1978 ), Cronbach's alpha values should exceed 0.7. The threshold values of constructs in this study ranged from 0.77 to 0.903. Regarding internal consistency, Bagozzi and Yi ( 1988 ) suggested that composite reliability (CR) should be ≥0.7. The coefficient value for CR in this study was between 0.857 and 0.928. Regarding convergent validity, Fornell and Larcker ( 1981 ) suggested that the average variance extracted (AVE) should be ≥0.5. Average variance extracted values in this study were between 0.60 and 0.811. Finally, regarding discriminant validity, according to Fornell and Larcker ( 1981 ), the square root of the AVE for each construct should exceed the inter-correlations of the construct with other model constructs. That was the case in this study, as shown in Table 4 .

Study measures, factor loading, and the constructs' reliability and convergent validity.

Discriminant validity and correlation.

Bold values are the square root of the AVE .

Hence, by analyzing the results of the measurement model, it can be concluded that the data are adequate for structural equation estimation.

Assessment of the Structural Model

This study used the PLS algorithm and a bootstrapping technique with 5,000 bootstraps as proposed by Hair et al. ( 2019 ) to generate the path coefficient values and their level of significance. The coefficient of determination ( R 2 ) is an important measure to assess the structural model and its explanatory power (Henseler et al., 2009 ; Hair et al., 2019 ). Table 5 and Figure 2 reveal that the R 2 value in the present study was 0.451 for psychological well-being, which means that 45.1% of changes in psychological well-being occurred due to social media use, social capital forms (i.e., bonding and bridging), social isolation, smartphone addiction, and phubbing. Cohen ( 1998 ) proposed that R 2 values of 0.60, 0.33, and 0.19 are considered substantial, moderate, and weak. Following Cohen's ( 1998 ) threshold values, this research demonstrates a moderate predicting power for psychological well-being among Mexican respondents ( Table 6 ).

Summary of path coefficients and hypothesis testing.

Structural model.

Strength of the model (Predictive relevance, coefficient of determination, and model fit indices).

Goodness of fit → SRMR = 0.063; d_ULS = 1.589; d_G = 0.512; chi-square = 2,910.744 .

Apart from the R 2 measure, the present study also used cross-validated redundancy measures, or effect sizes ( q 2 ), to assess the proposed model and validate the results (Ringle et al., 2012 ). Hair et al. ( 2019 ) suggested that a model exhibiting an effect size q 2 > 0 has predictive relevance ( Table 6 ). This study's results evidenced that it has a 0.15 <0.29 <0.35 (medium) predictive relevance, as 0.02, 0.15, and 0.35 are considered small, medium, and large, respectively (Cohen, 1998 ). Regarding the goodness-of-fit indices, Hair et al. ( 2019 ) suggested the standardized root mean square residual (SRMR) to evaluate the goodness of fit. Standardized root mean square is an absolute measure of fit: a value of zero indicates perfect fit and a value <0.08 is considered good fit (Hair et al., 2019 ). This study exhibits an adequate model fitness level with an SRMR value of 0.063 ( Table 6 ).

Table 5 reveals that all hypotheses of the study were accepted base on the criterion ( p -value < 0.05). H1a (β = 0.332, t = 10.283, p = 0.001) was confirmed, with the second most robust positive and significant relationship (between social media use and bonding social capital). In addition, this study evidenced a positive and significant relationship between bonding social capital and psychological well-being (β = 0.127, t = 4.077, p = 0.001); therefore, H1b was accepted. Regarding social media use and bridging social capital, the present study found the most robust positive and significant impact (β = 0.439, t = 15.543, p = 0.001); therefore, H2a was accepted. The study also evidenced a positive and significant association between bridging social capital and psychological well-being (β = 0.561, t = 20.953, p = 0.001); thus, H2b was accepted. The present study evidenced a significant effect of social media use on social isolation (β = 0.145, t = 4.985, p = 0.001); thus, H3a was accepted. In addition, this study accepted H3b (β = −0.051, t = 2.01, p = 0.044). Furthermore, this study evidenced a positive and significant effect of social media use on smartphone addiction (β = 0.223, t = 6.241, p = 0.001); therefore, H4a was accepted. Furthermore, the present study found that smartphone addiction has a negative significant influence on psychological well-being (β = −0.068, t = 2.387, p = 0.017); therefore, H4b was accepted. Regarding the relationship between smartphone addiction and phubbing, this study found a positive and significant effect of smartphone addiction on phubbing (β = 0.244, t = 7.555, p = 0.001); therefore, H5 was accepted. Furthermore, the present research evidenced a positive and significant influence of phubbing on psychological well-being (β = 0.137, t = 4.938, p = 0.001); therefore, H6 was accepted. Finally, the study provides interesting findings on the indirect effect of social media use on psychological well-being ( t -value > 1.96 and p -value < 0.05); therefore, H7a–d were accepted.

Furthermore, to test the mediating analysis, Preacher and Hayes's ( 2008 ) approach was used. The key characteristic of an indirect relationship is that it involves a third construct, which plays a mediating role in the relationship between the independent and dependent constructs. Logically, the effect of A (independent construct) on C (the dependent construct) is mediated by B (a third variable). Preacher and Hayes ( 2008 ) suggested the following: B is a construct acting as a mediator if A significantly influences B, A significantly accounts for variability in C, B significantly influences C when controlling for A, and the influence of A on C decreases significantly when B is added simultaneously with A as a predictor of C. According to Matthews et al. ( 2018 ), if the indirect effect is significant while the direct insignificant, full mediation has occurred, while if both direct and indirect effects are substantial, partial mediation has occurred. This study evidenced that there is partial mediation in the proposed construct ( Table 5 ). Following Preacher and Hayes ( 2008 ) this study evidenced that there is partial mediation in the proposed construct, because the relationship between independent variable (social media use) and dependent variable (psychological well-being) is significant ( p -value < 0.05) and indirect effect among them after introducing mediator (bonding social capital, bridging social capital, social isolation, and smartphone addiction) is also significant ( p -value < 0.05), therefore it is evidenced that when there is a significant effect both direct and indirect it's called partial mediation.

The present study reveals that the social and psychological impacts of social media use among University students is becoming more complex as there is continuing advancement in technology, offering a range of affordable interaction opportunities. Based on the 940 valid responses collected, all the hypotheses were accepted ( p < 0.05).

H1a finding suggests that social media use is a significant influencing factor of bonding social capital. This implies that, during a pandemic, social media use enables students to continue their close relationships with family members, friends, and those with whom they have close ties. This finding is in line with prior work of Chan ( 2015 ) and Ellison et al. ( 2007 ), who evidenced that social bonding capital is predicted by Facebook use and having a mobile phone. H1b findings suggest that, when individuals believe that social communication can help overcome obstacles to interaction and encourage more virtual self-disclosure, social media use can improve trust and promote the establishment of social associations, thereby enhancing well-being. These findings are in line with those of Gong et al. ( 2021 ), who also witnessed the significant effect of bonding social capital on immigrants' psychological well-being, subsequently calling for the further evidence to confirm the proposed relationship.

The findings of the present study related to H2a suggest that students are more likely to use social media platforms to receive more emotional support, increase their ability to mobilize others, and to build social networks, which leads to social belongingness. Furthermore, the findings suggest that social media platforms enable students to accumulate and maintain bridging social capital; further, online classes can benefit students who feel shy when participating in offline classes. This study supports the previous findings of Chan ( 2015 ) and Karikari et al. ( 2017 ). Notably, the present study is not limited to a single social networking platform, taking instead a holistic view of social media. The H2b findings are consistent with those of Bano et al. ( 2019 ), who also confirmed the link between bonding social capital and psychological well-being among University students using WhatsApp as social media platform, as well as those of Chen and Li ( 2017 ).

The H3a findings suggest that, during the COVID-19 pandemic when most people around the world have had limited offline or face-to-face interaction and have used social media to connect with families, friends, and social communities, they have often been unable to connect with them. This is due to many individuals avoiding using social media because of fake news, financial constraints, and a lack of trust in social media; thus, the lack both of offline and online interaction, coupled with negative experiences on social media use, enhances the level of social isolation (Hajek and König, 2021 ). These findings are consistent with those of Adnan and Anwar ( 2020 ). The H3b suggests that higher levels of social isolation have a negative impact on psychological well-being. These result indicating that, consistent with Choi and Noh ( 2019 ), social isolation is negatively and significantly related to psychological well-being.

The H4a results suggests that substantial use of social media use leads to an increase in smartphone addiction. These findings are in line with those of Jeong et al. ( 2016 ), who stated that the excessive use of smartphones for social media, entertainment (watching videos, listening to music), and playing e-games was more likely to lead to smartphone addiction. These findings also confirm the previous work of Jeong et al. ( 2016 ), Salehan and Negahban ( 2013 ), and Swar and Hameed ( 2017 ). The H4b results revealed that a single unit increase in smartphone addiction results in a 6.8% decrease in psychological well-being. These findings are in line with those of Tangmunkongvorakul et al. ( 2019 ), who showed that students with higher levels of smartphone addiction had lower psychological well-being scores. These findings also support those of Shoukat ( 2019 ), who showed that smartphone addiction inversely influences individuals' mental health.

This suggests that the greater the smartphone addiction, the greater the phubbing. The H5 findings are in line with those of Chatterjee ( 2020 ), Chotpitayasunondh and Douglas ( 2016 ), Guazzini et al. ( 2019 ), and Tonacci et al. ( 2019 ), who also evidenced a significant impact of smartphone addiction and phubbing. Similarly, Chotpitayasunondh and Douglas ( 2018 ) corroborated that smartphone addiction is the main predictor of phubbing behavior. However, these findings are inconsistent with those of Vallespín et al. ( 2017 ), who found a negative influence of phubbing.

The H6 results suggests that phubbing is one of the significant predictors of psychological well-being. Furthermore, these findings suggest that, when phubbers use a cellphone during interaction with someone, especially during the current pandemic, and they are connected with many family members, friends, and relatives; therefore, this kind of action gives them more satisfaction, which simultaneously results in increased relaxation and decreased depression (Chotpitayasunondh and Douglas, 2018 ). These findings support those of Davey et al. ( 2018 ), who evidenced that phubbing has a significant influence on adolescents and social health students in India.

The findings showed a significant and positive effect of social media use on psychological well-being both through bridging and bonding social capital. However, a significant and negative effect of social media use on psychological well-being through smartphone addiction and through social isolation was also found. Hence, this study provides evidence that could shed light on the contradictory contributions in the literature suggesting both positive (e.g., Chen and Li, 2017 ; Twenge and Campbell, 2019 ; Roberts and David, 2020 ) and negative (e.g., Chotpitayasunondh and Douglas, 2016 ; Jiao et al., 2017 ; Choi and Noh, 2019 ; Chatterjee, 2020 ) effects of social media use on psychological well-being. This study concludes that the overall impact is positive, despite some degree of negative indirect impact.

Theoretical Contributions

This study's findings contribute to the current literature, both by providing empirical evidence for the relationships suggested by extant literature and by demonstrating the relevance of adopting a more complex approach that considers, in particular, the indirect effect of social media on psychological well-being. As such, this study constitutes a basis for future research (Van Den Eijnden et al., 2016 ; Whaite et al., 2018 ) aiming to understand the impacts of social media use and to find ways to reduce its possible negative impacts.

In line with Kim and Kim ( 2017 ), who stressed the importance of heterogeneous social networks in improving social capital, this paper suggests that, to positively impact psychological well-being, social media usage should be associated both with strong and weak ties, as both are important in building social capital, and hence associated with its bonding and bridging facets. Interestingly, though, bridging capital was shown as having the greatest impact on psychological well-being. Thus, the importance of wider social horizons, the inclusion in different groups, and establishing new connections (Putnam, 1995 , 2000 ) with heterogeneous weak ties (Li and Chen, 2014 ) are highlighted in this paper.

Practical Contributions

These findings are significant for practitioners, particularly those interested in dealing with the possible negative impacts of social media use on psychological well-being. Although social media use is associated with factors that negatively impact psychological well-being, particularly smartphone addiction and social isolation, these negative impacts can be lessened if the connections with both strong and weak ties are facilitated and featured by social media. Indeed, social media platforms offer several features, from facilitating communication with family, friends, and acquaintances, to identifying and offering access to other people with shared interests. However, it is important to access heterogeneous weak ties (Li and Chen, 2014 ) so that social media offers access to wider sources of information and new resources, hence enhancing bridging social capital.

Limitations and Directions for Future Studies

This study is not without limitations. For example, this study used a convenience sampling approach to reach to a large number of respondents. Further, this study was conducted in Mexico only, limiting the generalizability of the results; future research should therefore use a cross-cultural approach to investigate the impacts of social media use on psychological well-being and the mediating role of proposed constructs (e.g., bonding and bridging social capital, social isolation, and smartphone addiction). The sample distribution may also be regarded as a limitation of the study because respondents were mainly well-educated and female. Moreover, although Internet channels represent a particularly suitable way to approach social media users, the fact that this study adopted an online survey does not guarantee a representative sample of the population. Hence, extrapolating the results requires caution, and study replication is recommended, particularly with social media users from other countries and cultures. The present study was conducted in the context of mainly University students, primarily well-educated females, via an online survey on in Mexico; therefore, the findings represent a snapshot at a particular time. Notably, however, the effect of social media use is increasing due to COVID-19 around the globe and is volatile over time.

Two of the proposed hypotheses of this study, namely the expected negative impacts of social media use on social isolation and of phubbing on psychological well-being, should be further explored. One possible approach is to consider the type of connections (i.e., weak and strong ties) to explain further the impact of social media usage on social isolation. Apparently, the prevalence of weak ties, although facilitating bridging social capital, may have an adverse impact in terms of social isolation. Regarding phubbing, the fact that the findings point to a possible positive impact on psychological well-being should be carefully addressed, specifically by psychology theorists and scholars, in order to identify factors that may help further understand this phenomenon. Other suggestions for future research include using mixed-method approaches, as qualitative studies could help further validate the results and provide complementary perspectives on the relationships between the considered variables.

Data Availability Statement

Ethics statement.

The studies involving human participants were reviewed and approved by Jiangsu University. The patients/participants provided their written informed consent to participate in this study.

Author Contributions

All authors listed have made a substantial, direct and intellectual contribution to the work, and approved it for publication.

Conflict of Interest

The authors declare that the research was conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest.

Funding. This study is supported by the National Statistics Research Project of China (2016LY96).

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Research Article

Social media addiction and emotions during the disaster recovery period—The moderating role of post-COVID timing

Roles Conceptualization, Writing – original draft, Writing – review & editing

* E-mail: [email protected] , [email protected]

Affiliation MONASH Pathway at Universal College Bangladesh, Dhaka, Bangladesh

Roles Conceptualization, Data curation, Formal analysis, Methodology, Writing – original draft, Writing – review & editing

Affiliation Department of Business Administration, Faculty of Business & Entrepreneurship (FBE), Daffodil International University, Dhaka, Bangladesh

Roles Writing – original draft, Writing – review & editing

Affiliation UCSI Graduate Business School, UCSI University, Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia

Affiliation College of Business Administration—CBA, International University of Business, Agriculture and Technology—IUBAT, Dhaka, Bangladesh

Roles Methodology, Writing – review & editing

Affiliation UKM-Graduate School of Business, Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia, Bangi, Selangor Darul Ehsan, Malaysia

Roles Supervision, Writing – review & editing

Affiliation Faculty of Entrepreneurship and Business, Universiti Malaysia Kelantan, Kota Bharu, Malaysia

Affiliation Department of Philosophy, College of Arts and Sciences—CAAS, International University of Business Agriculture and Technology—IUBAT, Dhaka, Bangladesh

Roles Data curation, Formal analysis, Methodology, Validation

Affiliations School of Health Sciences, Western Sydney University, Campbelltown, New South Wales, Australia, African Vision Research Institute, Discipline of Optometry, University of KwaZulu-Natal, Durban, South Africa

Roles Formal analysis, Methodology, Writing – review & editing

Affiliation Marketing and Public Relations at the QUT Business School, Queensland University of Technology, Queensland, Australia

• Dewan Muhammad Nur –A Yazdani, 
• Tanvir Abir, 
• Yang Qing, 
• Jamee Ahmad, 
• Abdullah Al Mamun, 
• Noor Raihani Zainol, 
• Kaniz Kakon, 
• Kingsley Emwinyore Agho, 
• Shasha Wang

• Published: October 20, 2022
• https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0274898
• Peer Review
• Reader Comments

Social media addiction, a recently emerged term in medical science, has attracted the attention of researchers because of its significant physical and psychological effects on its users. The issue has attracted more attention during the COVID era because negative emotions (e.g., anxiety and fear) generated from the COVID pandemic may have increased social media addiction. Therefore, the present study investigates the role of negative emotions and social media addiction (SMA) on health problems during and after the COVID lockdown.

A survey was conducted with 2926 participants aged between 25 and 45 years from all eight divisions of Bangladesh. The data collection period was between 2 nd September– 13 th October, 2020. Partial Least Square Structural Equation Modelling (PLS-SEM) was conducted for data analysis by controlling the respondents’ working time, leisure time, gender, education, and age.

Our study showed that social media addiction and time spent on social media impact health. Interestingly, while anxiety about COVID increased social media addition, fear about COIVD reduced social media addition. Among all considered factors, long working hours contributed most to people’s health issues, and its impact on social media addiction and hours was much higher than negative emotions. Furthermore, females were less addicted to social media and faced less health challenges than males.

The impacts of negative emotions generated by the COVID disaster on social media addiction and health issues should be reconsidered. Government and employers control people’s working time, and stress should be a priority to solve people’s social media addiction-related issues.

Citation: Nur –A Yazdani DM, Abir T, Qing Y, Ahmad J, Al Mamun A, Zainol NR, et al. (2022) Social media addiction and emotions during the disaster recovery period—The moderating role of post-COVID timing. PLoS ONE 17(10): e0274898. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0274898

Editor: Barbara Guidi, University of Pisa, ITALY

Received: February 5, 2022; Accepted: August 31, 2022; Published: October 20, 2022

Copyright: © 2022 Nur –A Yazdani et al. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License , which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.

Data Availability: All relevant data are within the manuscript and its Supporting information files.

Funding: The authors received no specific funding for this work.

Competing interests: The authors have declared that no competing interests exist.

Introduction

Social media, being a fundamental part of people’s lives, leaves an immense impact on every aspect. Scrolling and checking social media has become almost a daily routine of over half of the world’s population’s daily activities. According to statistics, in the last five years, the number of social media users has almost doubled, increasing from 2.2 billion in 2015 to 4.5 billion in 2022 [ 1 ]. This number of users is increasing at an incredible rate. In addition, according to data, there will be 52.58 million internet subscribers in Bangladesh in January 2022. At the beginning of 2022, Bangladesh’s number of internet users was 31.5% population. According to Kepios, internet subscribers in Bangladesh rose by 5.5 million (+11.6%) between 2021 and 2022. At the beginning of 2022, 29.7% of Bangladesh’s overall inhabitants used social media. Furthermore, according to data revealed in Meta’s advertising materials, Facebook had 44.70 million subscribers in Bangladesh in January 2022. According to Google’s commercial techniques, YouTube had 34.50 million subscribers in Bangladesh as of early 2022. As a result, it is pretty much evident that the usage of internet in Bangladesh is increasing on a regular basis [ 2 ]. The number is rising because social media is the only web-based platform where people with similar backgrounds, interests, activities, and connections can be linked [ 3 ]. Besides, the financial ability of people to buy social media (Facebook, Snapchat, Twitter, WhatsApp, Instagram etc.) accessible devices such as smartphones and laptops has increased, resulting in the increasing number of social media users [ 4 ]. As social media creates ample opportunities for people to correspond virtually, temporal and partial boundaries notwithstanding [ 5 ] and promotes communication and sharing of images and videos amongst social network users, individuals of all ages around the world are taking this advantage [ 6 ].

Moreover, the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic caused by Novel Corona Virus significantly influences every individual’s lifestyle [ 7 , 8 ]. Various governments are adopting policies such as lockdown, quarantine etc., to curb the spread of the virus by keeping people indoors [ 9 ]. Working from home and virtual education practices have forced people to spend a long time on social media in order to fulfil their needs for work- and disaster-related information, entertainment, and interpersonal communication [ 10 ]. Despite the fact that social media plays an undeniably beneficial role in sustaining contact and relationships among individuals, its increased usage is sufficient to result in addiction [ 11 ]. A past study has revealed that social media addiction depends on the daily time devoted to the social media platform, and more frequent daily visits increase addiction to social media profiles [ 12 ]. Another study found an important association between high school students’ daily average internet usage time and social media addiction [ 13 ]. However, while social media usage may not always be harmful, some people get addicted and use it extremely or obsessively [ 14 ]. Experts have observed the harmful effects of long-term addiction and extreme and obsessive social media usage and showed that such a level of social media addiction might result in psychological, physiological and productivity issues [ 15 ].

There is evidence that obsessive social media usage can impact users’ psychological, cognitive, perceptual, and physiological wellbeing. Addicted social media users may have withdrawal feelings, relational issues and others as well [ 16 ]. Recent research has found that many people have become addicted to social media due to the COVID-19 epidemic [ 11 ], creating several physical health issues such as headaches, sleeping disorders, stomach ailments, and exhaustion [ 17 , 18 ]. It has been found that using different online platforms, especially social media and shopping websites–whether for essential items or shopping items has increased a lot during COVID-19. This change in the excessive use of digital media has brought numerous physical disorders [ 19 ] and left adverse effects on the usual physical activities among the general population [ 20 ]. It has been established that despite social media being an essential and integral part of people’s lives for day-to-day work and communication, the impact caused by its extensive use on health cannot be ignored [ 21 ].

Social media addiction may create significant emotional problems as well. Fear resulting from much information on social media regarding the coronavirus disease and the ’lockdown’ situation caused high levels of uncertainty. It raised the level of stress, anxiety, and depression (sometimes leading to suicides) among people worldwide [ 22 – 24 ].

Social media usage hours are strongly correlated with creating social media addiction, and social media addiction causes several physical and psychological issues. Past studies from Bangladesh have assessed the effect of social media and smartphone use vis-à- COVID-19 (the virus). For instance, a study by Islam and colleagues [ 25 ] investigated complicated smartphone use, and complex social media use among College and University students in Bangladesh during the COVID-19 pandemic. Findings of that study indicated that problematic social media use was linked to poor psychological wellbeing (such as anxiety and depression) and other factors (particularly landowner age, and poor sleep) during the pandemic, which further suggested the demand for interventions included virtual awareness programmes among College and University students. The present study mainly focused on social media users’ health and psychological problems among workers across all the nine districts of Bangladesh after the COVID-19 restriction period imposed by the government of Bangladesh. This study will inform future similar studies and the establishment of new policies seeking to find out how Bangladeshi workers might be affected by social media use during the COVID-19 pandemic. Additionally, the study’s results could assist efforts to disseminate behavioural health information on social media.

Reviewing the relevant literature established that social media addiction brings physical and psychological changes. Consequently, the present research focused on psychological and physical issues related to social media addiction. Based on the background of the study above, the following research hypotheses were propounded.

Conceptual framework

According to the background and objectives of the study and based on the research hypothesises, the researchers have identified the variables of the present study and showed their hypothesised relationship in Fig 1 .

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https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0274898.g001

Based on the research purposes, conceptual framework and the discussion above, the current study established the following research hypotheses:

• Hypothesis 1 (H1) : Anxiety is correlated with social media addiction.

The COVID-19 pandemic is an epidemiologic and health crisis since it causes extensive psychological issues such as stress, anxiety, depression, trauma, panic, insomnia, death distress, anger, psychosis, boredom, and suicide [ 28 – 32 ].

• Hypothesis 2 (H2) : Fear is correlated with social media addiction.

However, the pandemic has underscored the downside of social media by showing that uncontrolled use propagates panic, fear, and misinformation about COVID-19 among mass populations [ 33 – 35 ]. There has been a great fear of contracting the virus among many people worldwide bee of the worldwide rise in the death toll due to the virus [ 36 ]. Excessive social media use has been identified as one of the major reasons behind this rise in fear. Social media platforms have become home to atrocious and sometimes erroneous information associated with the virus [ 9 ]. Social media users spread rumours, conspiracy theories, and even inaccurate calculations of COVID-19 cases and deaths, propagating fear among the masses [ 33 – 35 ].

• Hypothesis 3 (H3) : Social media addiction is correlated with social media usage hours.

According to a past study [ 12 ], social media addiction has risen significantly, as has the amount spent online on a routine basis. The obsession is exacerbated by the more frequent daily visits to social media accounts.

• Hypothesis 4 (H4) : Social media addiction is correlated with physical health issues.

Past research has revealed that uncontrollable usage of social media affects physical and mental health, such as cardio-metabolic health, sleep, affect, self-esteem, wellbeing and functioning, particularly in adolescents [ 37 ].

• Hypothesis 5 (H5) : Social media usage hours are correlated with physical health issues.

It is evident, and this is inspired by research that ’internet addiction’ is principally linked to increased social media or gaming activities [ 38 ].

• Hypothesis 6 (H6) : Time plays a moderating role in the proposed relationships. Specifically, a) the relationship between anxiety and social media addiction will be more substantial over time; b) the relationship between fear and social media addiction will be more substantial over time; c) the relationship between social media addiction and social media usage hours will be more robust over time and d) the relationship between social media addiction and physical issues will be more potent over time, after the disaster.

Participants

This study embraced a sequential cross-sectional design. Data were collected for six weeks from 2 nd September– 13 Th of October, 2020. This period was chosen because of the sad change in people’s lifestyle of being isolated from the outside world due to the pandemic and obtaining most of their necessities using a virtual medium. Furthermore, during this period, the situation was getting normal, participants resumed their work physically, and offices opened after the COVID-19 lockdown. Consequently, a new normal life was being experienced, and participants with technology, the internet, and social media became indispensable. This cross-sectional survey was conducted in all 8 divisions of the country in which, 2926 out of 3,500 yielding a response rate of about 84%.

A self-administered online survey was conducted using social media, in which 2926 out of 3,500 respondents correctly completed questionnaires. Anxiety and fear were determined by answering ‘yes’ to the question “ What kind of psychological problem do you feel for extensive use of the Internet ” while Physical issues were those answered relating to neck pain, headaches, and numbness to the question “ What kind of physical problem have you experienced from the extensive use of the Internet since COVID-19 lockdown ?”. Social media addiction was those that to the questions " Do you feel to urge use social media more and more ?", " Do you become restless or feel troubled if unable to use social media ?", " Do you spend a lot of time thinking about social media or planning to use social media ?" and " Do you use social media so much that it could cause a negative impact on your job or studies ?" and social media hours was determined by the responded to the question,”How many hours do you spend daily on using social media?”.

The data were collected over six weeks, starting from week 1 (2 nd -8 th September); followed by week 2 (9 th -15 th September), week 3 (16 th -22 nd September), week 4 (23 rd -29 th September), week 5 (30 th -6 th October) and week 6 (7 th -13 th October) in that order. Variables considered in the data collection included: gender, age, education level, work time and leisure time. A structured questionnaire was used for that purpose. Each variable in the questionnaire was coded; for instance, for gender, the male was coded "1", the female was coded "2", and the other was coded "88". For the level of education, Under SSC, SSC or equivalent, HSC or equivalent, Graduate, Postgraduate, Doctorate, Post Doctorate and Other were coded “1”, “2”, “3”, “4”, “5”, “6” and “7, respectively.

The Institutional Review Board of the International University of Business, Agriculture and Technology (IUBAT), Dhaka, Bangladesh, granted permission for this study (IUBAT/AR/2021/002). The study followed the principles of the Helsinki Declaration, as updated in Fortaleza. Before completing the questionnaire, all participants were informed about the study’s specific goal. Data collected from the field was treated with high confidentiality, and prior to data collection, the participants were informed of the confidentiality of the information they provide. Verbal and written consent was obtained from all the participants, and the participants’ confidentiality and privacy were maintained.

Respondents were permitted to complete the survey only once to avert repeated responses and to ensure that the data were valid to some extent. This was because data were limited to their IP addresses and device. Respondents had the option of terminating the survey at any time they desired. Furthermore, we ensured that the data were anonymous and confidential.

Statistical analysis

Smart PLS 3 was used to analyse this study through a Partial Least Square Structural Equation Modelling (PLS-SEM) approach. There are several reasons for choosing this approach. These include its ability to deal with complex multivariate models and variables with different scales, explore theories, and test multiple mediators simultaneously [ 30 ]. We used the SmartPLS to have the individual parameters and the significance level [ 39 ]. In this study, the first step was to create groups according to the categorical variables of interest, including age, gender, education, working time and leisure time and this was followed by data analysis of the measurement reliability, validity for the latent reflective construct and social media addiction were examined by several indicators as suggested by Malak and colleagues [ 40 ]. Next, the second stage involved assessing the structural model correlations and hypotheses testing with significance levels. Model estimation was conducted with r2, Q2 and effect size describes the path effect from exogenous construct to endogenous construct [ 41 ]. Next, the path coefficients of the groups were analysed to determine if they were significantly diverse from each other based on the guidelines proposed by Henseler et al. [ 42 ]. To enable figures using latent constructs, a mean score of the four measurement items of social media addiction was created. Graphical representations using SPSS statistical software was used in order to further understand the interaction effects and the changes of the endogenous variables over time, and this was carried out by creating a mean score of the four measurement items of social media addiction and the variable were classified into five values, which are: 0, 0.25, 0.5, 0.75. 1.

Two thousand nine hundred and twenty-six Bangladeshi respondents participated in this study, and the breakdown of their characteristics are shown in Table 1 where 60.7% respondents were male and 39.3% were female. Table 2 presents the hypothesis testing, path coefficients and their corresponding 95% Confidence Intervals (CIs), and the result suggests that the proposed model is well suited for confirming and explaining the positive effect of anxiety on social media addiction, as suggested in H1. Fear was negatively associated with social media addiction (β = -0.12, t = 7.00, p<0.001). H3 showed that social media addiction has a positive and significant effect on social media hours (β = 0.22, t = 7.03, p<0.001), similarly, a H4 showed a significant positive effect of social media addiction on physical issues (β = 0.44, t = 20.37, p<0.001). H5 revealed social media hours were significantly and positively related to physical issues (β = 0.07, t = 3.23, p<0.001), and all hypothesis reported in Table 2 was supported except H2.

https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0274898.t001

https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0274898.t002

The path coefficient for the five hypotheses differs statistically except for the effect of gender on social media hours and age on physical issues and social media addiction (see Table 2 for details). In this study, the value of R 2 on physical issues was substantially (75%), social media addiction was substantially (60%), and social media hours were higher than moderate (57%) because, in PLS-SEM, the R 2 value of 0.60 would be considered as substantial, 0.33 could be classified as mode. In contrast, 0.19 could be considered as weak [ 43 ]. The values of Q2 presented in Table 2 were higher than zero, which implies that this model has predictive relevance [ 43 ].

Table 3 presents hypothesis testing and path coefficient for time interactions. To test the moderating role of time after the Covid lockdown, the variable time (in weeks) was added to the model. Again, the model had good predictive accuracy (R 2 >50%), and predictive relevance (Q 2 >0) (see Table 3 for details), and hypothesis 6a revealed that the interaction term of time and anxiety has a positive effect on social media addiction (β = 0.06, p<0.001). Hypothesis 6c showed that the interaction term of time and social media addiction was significantly related positively related to social media hours (β = 0.04, p<0.01), and the result in hypothesis 6d suggests that the proposed model is well suited for confirming and explaining the positive effect of the interaction term of time and social media addiction on physical issues and all hypothesis reported in Table 3 was supported except hypothesis 6b. We found a positive association between anxiety, social media addiction and social media hours and the physical issue was stronger over time (see Fig 2a, 2c and 2d : Moderation Effects), and fear and social media addition so were not statistically significant, and time did not influence the relationship (see Fig 2b : Moderation Effects).

https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0274898.g002

https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0274898.t003

As shown in the Fig 3a (Time* Anxiety → Social Media Addiction), participants who reported anxiety always had higher levels of social media addiction. Considering the fluctuation across the six weeks, the social media addiction of participants who had anxiety increased over time, and the social media addiction of participants who did not have anxiety decreased over time (mean = 0.77, SD = 0.32). The social media addiction level tends to be the same between the beginning and the end of the six weeks (see Fig 3b : Time* Fear →Social Media Addiction). Social media addiction was split into low (< = 0.75), which accounted for 38%, and high (= 1), which accounted for 62%. High social media addiction always had higher social media hours ( Fig 3c : Time* Social Media Addiction → Social Media Hours) and physical issues ( Fig 3d : Time* Social Media Addiction → Physical Issues) across the weeks, which confirms the result of H4.

https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0274898.g003

Table 4 presents the Heterotrait-Monotrait Ratio (HTMT) results, and Table 3 indicates no discriminant validity problems according to the HTMT 0.85 criterion, indicating that there are no overlapping items from the respondents and the instrument used in this study has no problem in establishing the discriminant validity. The Cronbach’s Alpha and Composite Reliability were 0.78 and 0.86, respectively. These were both greater than the cut-off points of 0.6, confirming the reliability of the measurements. To achieve convergent validity, factor loadings should be greater than 0.7 [ 44 ]. The factor loadings of the four items relating to social media addiction were, " Do you spend a lot of time thinking about social media or planning to use social media ?" " Do you feel urges to use social media more and more ?" " Do you become restless or feel troubled if unable to use social media ?" and " Do you use social media so much that it could cause a negative impact on your job or studies ?" were 0.83, 0.81, 0.73 and 0.72, respectively. The Average Variance Extracted (AVE) of the latent construct of social media addiction was 0.60, which was greater than the cut-off point of 0.50. Therefore, convergent validity was achieved. The heterotrait-monotrait ratio of correlations (HTMT) values ranged from 0.01 to 0.84 across all single-indicator constructs in discriminant validity (see Table 2 for details). The reflective latent construct was lower than the cut-off point of 0.9 [ 45 ]. To examine the common method bias, Variance Inflation Factor (VIF) should be lower than 3.3 [ 46 ], and all VIFs ranged from 1.0 to 1.36.

https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0274898.t004

To assess the formative construct, weights of the indicators should be significant without collinearity problems [ 47 ]. The indicators were all significant (p<0.05) without collinearity issues (VIF<3.3): back pain (weight = 0.40, t = 15.65, p<0.001, VIF = 2.36), numbness (weight = 0.45, t = 18.20, p<0.001, VIF = 1.90), and headaches (weight = 0.28, t = 10.69, p<0.001, VIF = 2.18).

As addiction is defined as an irrepressible urge that is often accompanied by loss of control, internet addiction leads people to create problems from their uncontrollable abuse of Internet usage, which is related to other pathologies like depression, loneliness and social anxiety [ 48 ]. This current study aimed to examine how social media addiction and negative emotions influence health issues after the COVID-19 pandemic lockdown among Bangladeshi workers.

Our study found that the anxiety level of the participants increased over the period of six weeks with the increase in social media addiction, which is in consonance with a past study from Turkey [ 49 ], which revealed that University students’ social anxiety and happiness significantly forecast their addiction to social media. It is also consistent with several other previous studies [ 50 – 52 ]. This finding may be attributed to the fact that people who have communication difficulties in social environments and opt to create this kind of social interaction by the use of internet tools portray characteristics of social anxiety [ 53 ]. This is further buttressed by a past study [ 49 ] which found that happiness significantly forecasts university students’ problematic internet use. They espoused that people who are content in their social environment and worry less about being evaluated in this environment normally do not seek different online communication tools—consequently, the possibility of their being addicted to social media declines.

A study in Bangladesh [ 54 ] aimed to assess the prevalence of anxiety among Bangladeshi individuals during the COVID-19 pandemic, vis-a-vis social media exposure (SME) and electronic media exposure (EME), backed the findings of the present study. Another past study revealed that perceived feelings of loneliness predicted both excessive social media use and anxiety, with excessive social media use also increasing anxiety levels [ 21 ]. In recent times, the use of social media has been highly lauded to receive health and safety information and ensure that social contacts are maintained to deal with the isolation of the pandemic [ 55 ]. Possibly due to the distressing situation, experts have suggested social media used to be a transient means of recovery from distress and as a coping strategy. This needs to be conscientiously managed to deal with loneliness and negative emotions [ 56 ]. Consequently, social media and virtual communities enable users to interact with other individuals, strengthen relationships, publicise content, portion out common interests, experiences, and emotions (e.g., [ 57 ]), and also enhance their engagement in digital platforms [ 58 ]. Nonetheless, there is the risk of social media involvement becoming excessive or dysfunctional by activating a behaviour–reward feedback loop [ 59 ] which strengthens negative moods and supports a vicious use of social media.

Surprisingly, the present study found a negative association between fear and social media addiction. The study showed that social media addiction decreases users’ fear level, and fear level decreases with longer social media hours over the period of six weeks. This might be considered as the benefits of information exchange and peer support. Social media users can receive psychological support and advice from the people who are connected with them, which may help reduce their fear level. Thus, social interaction through social media, might positively affect the belief, ideas, and thoughts regarding the COVID-19 pandemic, social media use, which can aid build bridging, bonding, and maintained social capital [ 60 ].

As the strongest factor, “working hours” is positively correlated with social media hours, social media addiction, and physical problems. The significance of this finding is that working professionals who are involved in social media usage during working hours are likely to be preoccupied with sustaining a sustained link with social media to make sure that they take part in all rewarding experiences being shared on these platforms. Eventually, such people exhibit decreased work efficiency (both decisional and action) and a reduction in work performance. Accordingly, our finding could be explained through the tenets of the limited capacity model [ 61 ], because of the fact that internet usage may burden the capacity of an individual to process information. Because of this burdened capacity, such users would not efficiently process work-related information and delay making decisions or executing work-related tasks. That is to say, working professionals’ internet usage during working hours may hinder their intellectual processing ability and re-direct them from achieving their primary work tasks, resulting in reduced reported work performance decrement. Our finding aligns with that of past studies, which indicate that daily social media use during working hours is a distraction which has a negative impact on employees’ work performance [ 62 ]. The significant association between social media usage and hesitation is a new addition to the extant literature. It reveals that social media usage during working house can impact the decision-making ability and work efficiency of an individual, which, to our knowledge, has not been examined before.

On the contrary, other control variables such as leisure time, gender, education level and age are directly or indirectly negatively associated with physical issues. The study found that social media users with longer leisure time, higher education, and female have fewer physical problems caused by social media usage. Our finding of the association of social media users with longer leisure time and physical activity demonstrates that the there is a greater likelihood of engaging against not engaging in all three types of physical activity among internet users than among those who do not use the internet. Moreover, the results show that, contradictory to presumptions that spending a long time sitting at the computer may result in a sedentary lifestyle; weekly hours spent online were not significant predictors of the likelihood of engaging versus not engaging in physical activity. The results suggest a possible relationship between other Internet use components and physical activity.

Our finding of the association between social media users with higher education and physical activity suggests that there is a correlation between internet usage for studying and physical activity on the one hand, and between internet usage and social media on the other, suggesting that both studying and social media empower individuals to access information which could help them to develop particular plans for physical activity customized to their needs, perceptions, and abilities, whether strenuous or moderate. With regards to physical exercise to strengthen muscles, the particular digital uses, seeking information and playing games were identified as those which correlated with this type of physical activity. Looking for information is another activity which suggests a need for acquisition of knowledge and being competent in making plans about physical activity [ 63 ] independently.

The association between female social media users and physical activity showed that females had a stronger insight of ease of use, compatibility, relative advantage, and risk when they use social media, in comparison to men. This findings from the study also have been supported by some previous studies as well [ 64 , 65 ]. More recent research, for instance, one by Lin and Wang [ 66 ] aimed to explain the differences in gender in information-sharing behavior on social networking sites. To accomplish this, a comparative theoretical model of information sharing between genders was established. Consistent with past research, analysis revealed a greater importance about that privacy risk, social ties, and commitment for women than men, because attitude towards information sharing impacts people’s intention to share information more strongly for women than it does for men. Another recent research [ 67 ] made an attempt to examine gender differences in the use of social media by investigating adolescents aged 13–18 years in the U.S. and UK. Results showed that adolescent girls spent more time on smartphones, social media, texting, and general computer use, compared with boys. However, no further assessment was conducted to ascertain how much of this time was spent to plan an activity.

Moreover, older people are less addicted to social media, causing fewer physical disorders. We observed that females were less addicted to social media than their male counterparts, and therefore are particularly less vulnerable regarding physical issues caused by social media addiction. Hence, it can be summarized that generally, males with long working hours spend more time on social media and become addicted to it and consequently become victims of several physical disorders.

As discussed above, there exists is a positive association between social media usage hours and social media addiction level. Therefore, we can combine the terms like social media addiction to discuss the effects of social media usage hours and its effect on physical issues and the effect of social media addiction on physical issues. Our study found that several physical problems related to physical issues increase with the increase of social media addiction levels. Several studies support the findings of the present study. For instance, a study in Iran [ 68 ] proposed a possible psychopathology mechanism to elucidate psychological distress among Iranian young adults during the COVID-19 public health crisis. There was a significant association between problematic social media use and psychological distress, both directly and indirectly.

Moreover, a study [ 69 ] conducted in a Tech based company in India also revealed that employees engaged in too much social media usage were having sleep deprivation; eye strain; feeling of resentment; lack of depth in the relationships; compromise with the work quality, and a distraction from work. Another study among social media users observed a number of physical, psychological and behavioural issues. Frequently seen physical problems included a strain on eyes, neck pain, back pain, headache, watering of eyes, wrist and shoulder pain, which were consistent with other studies [ 70 ]. However, some exogenous variables were also considered to see if any external factors influence the association between Internet addiction and physical issues in this study. The study found that “working hours” only positively correlated with physical issues.

There is a stronger role that social media could play, that could enable us to treat socially-shaped diseases like obesity, depression, diabetes, heart disease, and other mental illnesses. A past study [ 71 ] outlined how social network thinking is growing, and described several current uses of social media in healthcare before describing how we could harness the understanding of social networks and media for this stronger role of treating socially physical and psychological diseases though on the platform, obsessive users have a higher prevalence of social encounters [ 72 ]. However, every aspect of daily living has been disrupted by the COVID-19 pandemic, giving rise to forced isolation and practising social distancing, economic difficulty, and fears of being infected by a potentially fatal illness, that could make a person to feel helpless and hopeless [ 73 ]. Past research [ 74 ] expressed concern about the way and manner individuals have endured in the past so as to identify strategies which could be especially successful in controlling health issues and developing resilience during critical times.

Notwithstanding the fact that this current study was systematically designed, it was limited in a number of ways. Firstly, our results were based on only workers in government and non-government companies. Secondly, the study covered only workers aged between 25 and 45 years. Due to the fact that the PLS-SEM technique is new and easy to implement, we can extend the study to assess the influence of the pandemic lockdown on other aspects of life other than health, people aged outside the age bracket 25–45 years. Thirdly, despite the fact that research on the PLS-SEM method has gained popularity during in the last ten years, there are sufficient research opportunities on subjects like mediation or multi-group analysis, which necessitate further investigation.

The study is potentially significant because it will offer social media users, healthcare workers, and policymaker’s insights into the adverse effect of addictive social media use. Most importantly, it will highlight the association of social media addiction with different issues related to our work, health, education, age, working hours, leisure time and gender, the very important issues at the centre of life.

Supporting information

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Social Media Addiction in High School Students: A Cross-Sectional Study Examining Its Relationship with Sleep Quality and Psychological Problems

• Published: 03 August 2021
• Volume 14 , pages 2265–2283, ( 2021 )

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• Adem Sümen   ORCID: orcid.org/0000-0002-8876-400X 1 &
• Derya Evgin 2  

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The aim of this study was to examine the relationship of social media addiction with sleep quality and psychological problems in high school students. The study is a cross-sectional, correlational type. The study was conducted with 1,274 students receiving education in a district located in the western region of Turkey. For the collection of the data, a Descriptive Information Form, the Social Media Addiction Scale for Adolescents (SMASA), the Strengths and Difficulties Questionnaire (SDQ), the Sleep Quality Scale (SQS) and the Sleep Variables Questionnaire (SVQ) were used. Among the high school students who participated in the research, 49.3% stated that they had been using social media for 1–3 years, 53.9% reported that they spent 1–3 h per day on social media, and 42.8% stated that they placed their telephone under their pillow or beside their bed while sleeping. Students’ mean scores were 16.59 ± 6.79 (range: 9–45) for the SMASA, 16.54 ± 4.27 (range: 0–40) for total difficulties, and 14.18 ± 1.56 (range: 7–21) for the SQS, while their sleep efficiency value was 97.9%. According to the research model, difficulties experienced by high school students increase their social media addiction, while they decrease prosocial behaviours. Social media addiction in high school students decreases students’ sleep efficiency (p < 0.05). It is considered important to conduct further public health studies for children and adolescents related to the risks caused by the excessive use of technology, the consequences of social media addiction, measures to protect psychological health, sleep programmes and the importance of sleep quality.

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1 Introduction

Together with the very rapid digitalization in our age, the use of social media is increasing in our country and in the world (Ersöz & Kahraman, 2020 ; Singh et al., 2020 ). According to the Digital 2021: Global Overview Report, the time spent on social media has increased 1.5 times in the last 5 years. The most widely used social networks are listed as: Facebook, YouTube, WhatsApp, FB Messenger, Instagram, WeChat, TikTok and QQ (DataReportal, 2021a ). As for Turkey, the use of social media has increased by 11.1% in the past year, and YouTube, Instagram, WhatsApp, Facebook, Twitter and FB Messenger are the most frequently used social networks (DataReportal, 2021b ). When the way of dealing with social media addiction is examined, it can be said that nowadays, social media addiction has ceased to be an ordinary problem and become a disease associated with a global epidemic. People all over the world can show excessive interest in social media and spend a great deal of time using social media. For this reason, social media has a negative effect on the lives of millions of people in the world (Andreassen, 2015 ; Singh et al., 2020 ).

In a study by Drahošová and Balco ( 2017 ), in which they investigated the advantages and disadvantages of social media use, 97.7% of participants stated that the advantages of using social media were communication and the exchange of information, while 72.2% stated that the biggest disadvantage was internet addiction. It is known that among users, especially the younger age group faces the risk of addiction. Although social media is regarded as a new area of socialization and that this situation is an advantage (Savcı & Aysan, 2017 ), it is also reported that social media has a negative effect on interpersonal relationships (Çalışır, 2015 ), psychological health (Chen et al., 2020 ) and private life (Acılar & Mersin, 2015 ), increases levels of depression (Haand & Shuwang, 2020 ), and leads to social media addiction. Indeed, it has been determined that in the case of adolescent users, excessive levels of use are associated with paranoid thoughts, phobic anxiety and feelings of anger and hostility (Bilgin, 2018 ). Moreover, an increase in periods of social media use can cause a reduction in sleep quality (Eroğlu & Yıldırım, 2017 ). Poor sleep quality can lead to daytime sleepiness in students and to negative effects on their performance, school achievement, activities and energy (Güneş et al., 2018 ).

Due to the coronavirus pandemic, the switch to the distance education process was made in line with the restrictions implemented for protecting public health. The extension of periods spent at home by adolescents has led to long periods of exposure to screens, a restriction of outdoor activities, a reduction in peer interactions, unhealthy sleep patterns, and increases in stress and anxiety levels (Liu et al., 2021 ; Wang et al., 2020 ). Based on this, the aim of this study is to examine the relationship of social media addiction with sleep quality and psychological problems in high school students.

2.1 Study Design

This is a cross-sectional, correlational type of research. In this study, which was conducted in order to determine the relationship of social media addiction with sleep quality and psychological problems in high school students, a path analysis study was made in line with the examined literature and the aim, and the theoretical model is shown in Fig.  1 . The model consists of four hypotheses, and the correlations between the variables in these hypotheses are included in the model.

H 1 : Difficulties experienced by high school students (emotional problems, conduct problems, attention deficit and hyperactivity, and peer problems) increase social media addiction.

H 2 : Prosocial behaviours in high school students decrease social media addiction.

H 3 : Social media addiction in high school students increases poor sleep quality.

H 4 : Social media addiction in high school students decreases sleep efficiency.

Path diagram of the research model. SMASA: Social Media Addiction Scale for Adolescents, SQS: Sleep Quality Scale

2.2 Participants

The study was conducted in 15 high schools affiliated to a District National Education Directorate in the south of Turkey. A total of 4,602 students are registered at these high schools in the 2020–2021 academic year. Since education at the schools is carried out in the form of distance education within the scope of the COVID-19 measures, the research was carried out online via the District National Education Directorate and the school principals. The study was completed between 01–30 December 2020 with a total of 1,274 people with the aim of reaching all students. Students registered at high school and volunteering to participate in the study were included in the research. A 99% error rate and 3.07% confidence interval originating from the sample number of the research were found.

2.3 Data Collection Tools

A Descriptive Information Form prepared by the researchers by examining the literature, the Social Media Addiction Scale for Adolescents, the Strengths and Difficulties Questionnaire, the Sleep Quality Scale, and the Sleep Variables Questionnaire were used for data collection.

Descriptive Information Form

This was prepared in line with the literature, and consists of questions related to adolescents’ socio-demographic characteristics, school achievement, family, friend relationships, sleep status, and extent of using social media. School achievement and relationship levels were classified as “good”, “average” or “poor” depending on the students’ own statements.

Social Media Addiction Scale for Adolescents (SMASA)

This scale was developed by Özgenel et al. ( 2019 ) with the aim of determining adolescents’ levels of social media addiction. The scale consists of a single factor and includes nine items. The highest score that can be obtained from the five-point Likert-type scale is 45, while the lowest score is 9. It can be said that adolescents’ social media addiction is greater as scores obtained in the scale increase, while as scores decrease, their level of addiction is lower. The Cronbach alpha internal consistency reliability coefficient of the scale is 0.904. In this study, however, the Cronbach alpha value was found to be 0.880.

Strengths and Difficulties Questionnaire (SDQ)

Developed by Goodman ( 1997 ), this scale is extensively used all over the world to examine children’s and adolescents’ psychological and behavioural problems. The scale was adapted to Turkish by Güvenir et al. ( 2008 ). Consisting of a total of 25 questions, the scale is scored with a three-point Likert-type rating, and the questions are scored as “0”, “1” and “2” according to their degree of accuracy. The scale includes subscales of emotional problems, conduct problems, attention deficit and hyperactivity, peer problems, and prosocial behaviours, each containing five questions. Although each subscale can be evaluated in itself, the total of the first four subscales gives a total difficulty score. While high scores for prosocial behaviours reflect an individual’s strengths in the social domain, high scores in the other four domains indicate that the problem areas are severe. The Cronbach alpha internal consistency reliability coefficient of the scale is 0.73, while in this study, the Cronbach alpha value was found to be 0.776.

Sleep Quality Scale and Sleep Variables Questionnaire (SQS-SVQ)

This scale was developed by Meijer and van den Wittenboer ( 2004 ), and the Turkish validity and reliability study was carried out by Önder et al. ( 2016 ). Seven scale items that measure sleep quality and eight questionnaire items that identify parental control, total sleep time, midpoint of sleep, and sleep efficiency are included in the SQS-SVQ. Each of the SQS items have three categories scored from 1 to 3. Scores that can be obtained from the scale range between 7 and 21. A high score obtained from the scale indicates poor sleep quality, while a low score indicates good sleep quality. Among the SVQ items, however, only sleep efficiency was calculated and used. The Cronbach alpha internal consistency reliability coefficient of the scale is 0.72. In this study, however, the Cronbach alpha value was calculated as 0.714.

2.4 Data Collection

The data were collected by using an online web-based questionnaire via Google Forms. The questionnaire was sent to the students through social media networks via the District National Education Directorate and the school principals. Before beginning the study, the study aim and method were explained to the students and their families, and it was stated that the data would be used only for scientific purposes, that the data would be kept confidential, that the study would be conducted based on the principle of voluntariness, and that participants were free to take part in the research or not. After the students who agreed to take part in the study had confirmed that they were volunteers in an electronic environment, they began to reply to the questions. It took an average of 15–20 min to respond to the questionnaires. A total of 1,366 students filled in the form. When the forms were examined after the study, 92 forms were not evaluated due to missing data. Therefore, the data collection process was completed with 1,274 students.

2.5 Data Evaluation

The statistical analyses of the data were made using the SPSS Statistics Base V 23 version of Statistical Package for the Social Sciences and AMOS 21.0 software. For evaluating the data of the study, descriptive statistical methods (frequency, percentage, mean and standard deviation) were used; to test the differences between groups, t-test for independent variables and one-way variance analysis were performed; for comparisons between groups, the post-hoc Bonferroni and Tukey tests for multiple comparisons were utilised. In the research, the path analysis method was applied to test the hypotheses of the model created to determine the relationship of social media addiction with psychological problems and sleep quality. The results were evaluated at a 95% confidence interval and at p < 0.05, p < 0.01 and p < 0.001 significance levels.

2.6 Ethical Aspect of the Research

To be able to conduct the research, institutional permission was obtained from Antalya Provincial Directorate of Education (date: 25/09.2020, No: E.13536854), while ethical approval was obtained from Akdeniz University Clinical Research Ethics Committee (date: 19/02/2020, No: KAEK-174). Meetings were held with school principals of all the schools, and the research aim, content and method were explained to them. Participants’ consent was obtained by making an announcement about the study on the first page of the online link of the data collection tools.

Among the high school students participating in the research, 70.0% were girls, and their average age was 15.36 ± 1.22. Approximately half of the students were studying in first grade (45.4%), while over half of them (61.9%) stated that their school achievement level was average. The majority of students reported that they had good relationships with their mothers (85.2%), fathers (77.1%), siblings (72.2%) and friends (77.5%). It was revealed that 75.1% of students decided when to go to bed themselves, 65.6% did not turn off their telephones while sleeping, 44.6% kept their telephones away from the bed, and 42.8% placed their telephones under their pillow or beside their bed. The majority of students stated that they had been using social media for 1–3 years (49.3%), and that they spent 1–3 h per day on social media (53.9%), while 35.9% checked their social media as soon as a notification came. 10.3% of students considered themselves to be social media addicts, while 72.7% believed that society was addicted to social media (Table 1 ).

The high school students’ mean SMASA score was determined to be 16.59 ± 6.79. For the SDQ, their mean score for total difficulties was calculated as 16.54 ± 4.27. Among the SDQ subscales, the highest mean score was for prosocial behaviours with 7.94 ± 1.88, while the lowest was for conduct problems with 2.23 ± 1.49. The total SQS mean score was calculated as 14.18 ± 1.56, while the sleep efficiency value was calculated as 97.9% (Fig.  2 ).

Participants’ SMASA, SQS-SVQ and SDQ total and subscale mean scores (n: 1274)

Mean SMASA scores of female students (p < 0.001), students with poor school achievement (p < 0.001), students who had poor relationships with their mothers (p < 0.001), fathers (p < 0.001), siblings (p < 0.001) and friends (p < 0.05), whose parents decided on their bedtime (p < 0.05), who did not turn off their telephones while sleeping (p < 0.001), who had been using social media for more than seven years (p < 0.001), who spent more than seven hours on social media per day (p < 0.001), who checked their social media notifications at every spare moment (p < 0.001), and who considered themselves (p < 0.001) and society (p < 0.001) to be social media addicts were found to be higher. Female students (p < 0.05), students who had poor relationships with their mothers (p < 0.01) and siblings (p < 0.05), and those who did not turn off their telephones while sleeping (p < 0.01) were determined to have higher mean SQS scores. It was revealed that female students (p < 0.001), students with poor school achievement (p < 0.001), students who had poor relationships with their mothers (p < 0.001), fathers (p < 0.001), siblings (p < 0.001) and friends (p < 0.001), who had used social media for more than seven years (p < 0.005), who spent more than seven hours on social media per day (p < 0.001), who checked their social media notifications at every spare moment (p < 0.001), and who considered themselves (p < 0.001) and society (p < 0.001) to be social media addicts had higher mean SDQ scores (Table 1 ).

In the study, a positive correlation of students’ mean SMASA scores with SDQ-conduct problems, SDQ-attention deficit, SDQ-emotional problems, SDQ-peer problems, SDQ-total difficulties index and total SQS mean scores was found, while a negative correlation was found with SDQ-prosocial behaviours and SVQ-sleep efficiency mean scores (p < 0.01) (Table 2 ).

The standardised estimates related to the research model drawn within the scope of the study are given in Table 3 . According to the research model, difficulties experienced by high school students have a positive effect on social media addiction (β = 0.293), while prosocial behaviours have a negative effect on social media addiction (β = -0.159) (p < 0.05). Social media addiction in high school students has a negative effect on sleep efficiency (β = -0.094, p < 0.05). As a result of the path analysis, it was determined that the goodness-of-fit indices of the model had acceptable values and that model-data fit was achieved (İlhan & Çetin, 2014 ; Kline, 2011 ). Accordingly, hypotheses H 1 , H 2 ve H 4 relating to the model were accepted, while hypothesis H 3 was not accepted (Table 3 ).

4 Discussion

Social media use by individuals has steadily increased in recent years (Dong et al., 2020 ; Fernandes et al., 2020 ; Kashif & Aziz-Ur-Rehman, 2020 ; Lemenager et al., 2021 ). Especially young people increasingly use social media and the internet, which is an easily and rapidly accessible means of mass communication, frequently for academic and other purposes. These tools are not merely a source of information, their use is also sought for other purposes such as social interaction, games and entertainment (Singh & Barmola, 2015 ). The decrease seen in individuals’ interaction in social life and the increase in the time they spend at home due to the COVID-19 pandemic have increased the use of online communication tools (Benke et al., 2020 ; King et al., 2020 ; Oliviero et al., 2021 ). The steady increase in internet and social media addiction among young people in recent years has already been reported (Fernandes et al., 2020 ; Kashif & Aziz-Ur-Rehman, 2020 ; Orben et al., 2020 ; Scott et al., 2019 ). However, in this study, it was seen that high school students’ mean social media addiction scores (16.59 ± 6.79) were below average.

In the Addiction Prevention Training Programme of Turkey implemented by Green Crescent ( 2017 ), certain criteria were defined concerning the case of whether or not high school students’ are addicted to social media. Accordingly, it is stated that if social media is the first choice that comes to mind in cases of boredom, if it takes precedence over real life, if it leads to disruption of daily life and negligence of responsibilities, if it takes up an excessive amount of time and creates anxiety when it cannot be accessed, if the need is felt to constantly share things, then adolescents may be addicted to social media. The majority of students included in the scope of the study stated that they had been using social media for 1–3 years (49.3%), and that they spent 1–3 h on social media per day (53.9%), while 35.9% checked their social media whenever a notification came. Therefore, it can be said that students taking part in the study were at risk of social media use disorder. However, another important finding of the study is that while one in ten students regarded themselves as social media addicts, around three-quarters of them considered that society was addicted to social media. This situation in fact shows that the students had awareness regarding social media addiction, but that they did not accept addiction for themselves. In a study conducted by Fernandes et al. ( 2020 ) on adolescents in India, Malaysia, Mexico and Great Britain, it was found that during the pandemic, periods of social media use, playing online games, and watching video content increased significantly compared to before the pandemic. In other conducted studies, it is also seen that the period spent on social media has increased during the pandemic compared to before the pandemic (71.4%) (Lemenager et al., 2021 ), and that people frequently spend their free time on social media during the pandemic (67%) (Kashif & Aziz-Ur-Rehman, 2020 ).

In the study, it was revealed that social media addiction scores were higher in students who had poor relationships with their mothers, fathers, siblings and friends. Social media prevents adolescents from forming close personal relationships with their families and immediate environment. Social media use disorder also causes weak family and friend relationships in adolescents (Moreno & Uhls, 2019 ). Numerous problems emerge due to the misuse of social media. In the study, it was determined that mean SQS scores were higher in students who had poor relationships with their mothers and siblings, and those who did not switch off their telephones while sleeping. It has been found that adolescents with high levels of problematic internet use and of social media use suffer from depression, loneliness, lower sleep quality and high anxiety levels (Bányai et al., 2017 ; Alonzo et al., 2020 ; Fernandes et al., 2020 ; Orben et al., 2020 ). In some studies, a statistically significant correlation between social media use and adolescent sleep patterns, especially delayed sleep onset, has been determined (Alimoradi et al., 2019 ; Gradisar et al., 2013 ; Scott et al., 2019 ). In the study, students’ total sleep quality mean score (14.18 ± 1.56) was revealed to be poor, and their sleep efficiency value was calculated as 97.9%. This shows that the adolescents included in the sample were unable to sleep efficiently and that their sleep quality was low. This situation may be the result of changes in sleep habits of adolescents due to remaining at home because of the coronavirus pandemic. Similarly, in a study carried out in Italy, it was determined that as a result of the isolation measures taken against the coronavirus, a big delay in children’ sleeping/waking schedules and an increase in sleep disorders occurred in all age groups (Oliviero et al., 2021 ). In another study, it was revealed that problems occurred in adolescents during the pandemic, such as delay in falling asleep, reduction in length of sleep, respiratory impairment during sleep, and sleepiness during the day, and that sleep routines were disrupted (Becker & Gregory, 2020 ). The problem of lack of sleep is very common in adolescents, and is an important public health problem that needs intervention in several aspects, such as mental health, obesity and academic performance (Owens, 2014 ; Sampasa-Kanyinga et al., 2020 ).

In the study, the high school students’ mean total difficulties score in the SDQ was calculated as medium level (16.54 ± 4.27). Among the SDQ subscales, the highest mean score was found to be for prosocial behaviours, while the lowest was for conduct problems. The high level of prosocial behaviours and low level of conduct problems in the sample group indicates that the research group were able to cope with difficulties. A negative correlation was found between SDQ-prosocial behaviours and SVQ-sleep efficiency mean scores in the study. This situation can be interpreted to say that social media use can lead to lack of sleep in students, and that students’ prosocial behaviours can decrease. Pandemic adolescents showed higher levels of other problems and a more problematic social media usage than peers before the pandemic (Muzi et al., 2021 ). Moreover, significant increases are seen in individuals’ rates of problematic internet use and of social media use due to the pandemic, and it is stated that this situation creates negative effects in terms of individuals’ psychological health (Baltacı et al., 2021 ; Oliviero et al., 2021 ). In a qualitative study conducted by Baltacı et al., ( 2020 ), it was stated that students experienced difficulties in controlling their internet use during the pandemic, and that since they were unable to control this, they experienced negative emotions and regarded themselves as internet addicts due to this situation.

Evidence suggests that problematic use of gaming, the internet, and social media among adolescents is on the rise, affecting multiple psycho-emotional domains. Moreover, excessive use of digital activities and smartphones may result in multiple mental and physical problems, such as behavioural addiction, cognitive impairment, and emotional distress (Ophir et al., 2020 ). It was found that as students’ mean social media scores increased, their mean scores for attention deficit, conduct problems, emotional problems, peer problems and total difficulties index also increased. In addition, it has been determined that the difficulties experienced by high school students (emotional problems, conduct problems, attention deficit and hyperactivity, and peer problems) increase social media addiction (H 1 ). It is emphasized that spending a long time on the Internet increases the possibility of exposure to risks and pathological tendencies, and that the time spent using social media is harmful to mental health (Alonzo et al., 2020 ; Coyne et al., 2020 ; Stockdale & Coyne, 2020 ; Twigg et al., 2020 ). It is known that during the pandemic, missing the daily routines that school brings and absence of time spent with peers causes adolescents to experience a great number of problems. These problems can be listed as increase in monotonous time spent at home, disrupted sleep habits, increased exposure to screens, intensive internet use, increased eating habits, decreased physical activity, increased attention and concentration problems, loss of academic achievement due to reduced motivation, increased domestic conflicts, inability to cope with negative emotions such as aggression, boredom, anger and anxiety, increased emotional activity, and deterioration of emotion regulation skills (Ghosh et al., 2020 ; Lee, 2020 ; Oliviero et al., 2021 ). In support of the literature, in this study, too, it was seen that especially during these difficult times that we have been going through, the high school students’ social relationships were weakened, their school achievement decreased, the frequency and length of their social media use increased, and there was an increase in the psychological problems and social media addiction that they experienced. This situation reveals that adolescents are at risk biopsychosocially in terms of healthy development and acquiring identity, and with regard to other risks (cyber violence, obesity, loneliness, depression, anxiety, etc.) that the digital environment will bring (Orben et al., 2020 ). Especially the greater amount of time that adolescents spend using social media has increased the negative effects on adolescents’ general health and wellbeing, including sleep (Dong et al., 2020 ).

Another important result of the study is the finding that prosocial behaviors reduce social media addiction in high school students (H 2 ). Some studies showed that there were short comings in social skills associated with social interactions and internet and social media addiction (Chua et al., 2020 ; Dalvi-Esfahani et al., 2021 ). While the effective use of the internet creates an opportunity for the adolescent, its excessive use may negatively affect the adolescent's physical, psychological, social and cognitive development (Hou et al., 2019 ). A study found that depression, bullying, loneliness, and sleep quality are among the most common health problems that arise from social media use (Royal Society for Public Health, 2020 ). Kurulan araştırma modelinde, sosyal medya bağımlılığının lise öğrencilerinde kötü uyku kalitesini etkilemediği (H 3 ) fakat uyku verimliliğini (H 4 ) azalttığı sonucuna varılmıştır. There are studies showing that social media addiction is positively associated with poor sleep quality (Alfaya et al., 2021 ; Ho, 2021 ; Tandon et al., 2020 ; Wong et al., 2020 ). According to Garett et al. ( 2018 ), using social media for longer periods of time and spending more time with social media causes the quality of sleep of users to decrease. Wong et al. ( 2020 ) determined that both the severity of internet gaming disorder and social media addiction were positively related to psychological distress and sleep disorder. In a study on social media use, sleep quality, and well-being in 467 adolescents, it was found that social media use was associated with poor sleep, anxiety, depression, and low self-esteem. Poor sleep was most strongly associated with nighttime social media use (Woods & Scott, 2016 ). It is important for the development of a healthy generation to educate adolescents about conscious social media and smart phone use and to emphasize the importance of sleep habits (Gıca, 2020 ).

5 Conclusions

According to the results obtained in the study, the students’ scores for social media addiction and psychological problems were found to be below average, while their sleep quality scores were negatively above. Although it is known that sleep is very important for adolescent health, it was determined that increased social media addiction in the students in the sample group increased the potential for the emergence of health and sleep problems. It should be borne in mind that the social distancing, recommendations to stay at home, and distance education implemented due to the pandemic can lead to greater flexibility in sleeping and waking times, and can cause an increase in the use of technology for long periods and in social media addiction. It was seen that social media addiction in students was positively correlated with conduct and emotional problems, attention deficit/hyperactivity, peer problems and poor sleep quality, and negatively correlated with prosocial behaviours and sleep efficiency. Based on this, school health nurses should plan and implement appropriate intervention methods in collaboration with other healthcare personnel (psychologists, school counsellors, social workers, etc.). Enabling high school students’ access to the correct information sources, open and transparent sharing of information, planning daily routines at home such as meals, sleep and homework, increasing physical activities, expanding intelligent internet use that will support personal and social development, enabling adolescents’ return to the peer and school environment by creating safe school environments in as short a time as possible, creating alternative means and support groups for peer interaction by reducing isolation and loneliness, and appropriate therapeutic interventions such as sleep education and interventions can be listed among these measures and precautions.

Data Availability

The data that support the fndings of this study are available from the corresponding author upon reasonable request.

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Sümen, A., Evgin, D. Social Media Addiction in High School Students: A Cross-Sectional Study Examining Its Relationship with Sleep Quality and Psychological Problems. Child Ind Res 14 , 2265–2283 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12187-021-09838-9

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When Kyle Palmberg set out to design a research study as the capstone project for his psychology major at St. Mary’s University of M i nnesota in Winona, he knew he wanted his focus to be topical and relevant to college students.

His initial brainstorming centered around the mental health impact of poor sleep quality. 

“I wanted to look at college students specifically, to see the different ways that sleep quality can be harmed and how that can impact your mental health,” he said. As he reviewed the scientific literature, one variable kept appearing. “The topic that kept coming up was social media overuse,” he said. “It is such an important thing to my target demographic of college students.”

Palmberg, 22, grew up surrounded by social media. He’d heard plenty of warnings about the downsides of spending too much time online, and he’d seen many of his peers seemingly anchored to their phones, anxious or untethered if they had to put them down for more than a few minutes at a time.

“I think from my perspective as someone who’s been really interested in psychology as an academic discipline, social media addiction is also something I’ve been aware of personally,” Palmberg said. “I can tell within myself when things can become harmful or easy to misuse. I often see the hints of addictive behaviors in peers and coworkers.”

Palmberg found much of the published research on the topic inspiring, particularly a 2003 study on internet gambling addiction. 

“They were looking at how internet gambling addiction permeates a person’s behavior,” he said. Palmberg hypothesized that there may be behavioral similarities between people addicted to online gambling and those addicted to social media. 

“Social media provides this convenient platform for users to interact with others,” he said. “As users grow addicted, they learn that they can come back to that social platform more and more to get their needs met. The tolerance users have for gratifying that social need grows. Then they have to use social media more and more often to get those benefits.”

The negative impact of a growing dependence on social media is that time spent online takes away from real in-person interactions and reduces the time a person has available for basic personal care needs, like sleep and exercise, Palmberg said. This can ultimately have a negative impact on mental health.

“As a person builds a high tolerance for the use of social media it causes internal and external conflict,” he said. “You know it is wrong but you continue to use it. You relapse and struggle to stop using it.” Palmberg said that social media use can be a form of “mood modification. When a person is feeling down or anxious they can turn to it and feel better at least for a moment. They get a sense of withdrawal if they stop using it. Because of this negative side effect, it causes that relapse.”

Palmberg decided he wanted to survey college students about their social media use and devise a study that looked at connections between the different motivations for that use and potential for addictive behaviors. He ran his idea by his academic advisor, Molly O’Connor, associate professor of psychology at Saint Mary’s, who was intrigued by his topic’s clear connections to student life.

“We often notice social media addiction with our student population,” O’Connor said. She knew that Palmberg wouldn’t have a hard time recruiting study participants, because young people have first-hand experience and interest in the topic. “He’s looking at college students who are particularly vulnerable to that addiction. They are tuned into it and they are using it for coursework, socialization, entertainment, self-documentation.”

O’Connor said she and her colleagues at the university see signs of this addiction among many of their students. 

“They’ll be on their phones during class when they are supposed to pay attention,” she said. “They can’t help themselves from checking when a notification comes through. They say they had trouble sleeping and you’ll ask questions about why and they’ll say they were scrolling on their phone before they went to bed and just couldn’t fall asleep.”

The entertainment-addiction connection

Once his study was given the go-ahead by his advisor and approved by the university for human-subjects research, Palmberg had two months to recruit participants. 

To gather his research subjects, he visited classes and gave a short speech. Afterward, students were given an opportunity to sign up and provide their emails. Palmberg recruited 86 participants this way, and each was asked to fill out an anonymous survey about their social media habits.

Palmberg explained that the main framework of his study was to gain a deeper understanding of why college students use social media and the circumstances when it can become addictive and harmful to their mental health and well-being. He also hypothesized that perceived sleep quality issues would be connected to social media addiction.

After collecting the surveys, Palmberg said, “We essentially threw the data into a big spreadsheet. We worked with it, played with it, analyzed it.” He explained that his analysis focused on motivations for social media use, “including building social connections and self-documentation.”

What Palmberg discovered was that his subjects’ most popular motivation for social media use was for entertainment. While some participants listed other motivations, he said the most “statistically significant” motivation was entertainment.

“Not only was entertainment the most highly endorsed reason to use social media in the study,” Palmberg said, “for college students it was the only motivation we analyzed that was statistically connected to social media addiction and perceived stress. The entertainment motivation was also related to poor sleep quality.”

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He found connections between a reliance on social media for entertainment and addictive behaviors, like an inability to shut down apps or put a phone away for an extended period of time. “If a person is using social media for entertainment, they are more likely to be addicted to social media than someone who is not using it for entertainment,” Palmberg said.

The structures of popular social media platforms reinforce addictive behaviors, he said. “Current trends in social media lean more toward entertainment platforms like TikTok or Instagram. People are going on there just to pass time,” Palmberg said. These brief and repetitive formats encourage addiction, he said, because the dopamine high they create is short-lived, causing users to keep visiting to get those fleetingly positive feelings. 

O’Connor supports Palmberg’s conclusions. A reliance on social media platforms for entertainment encourages addiction, she said. This is backed up by student behavior.

“My big takeaway was the interest in the entertainment variable was the key predictor of addiction. It’s not necessarily the students that are using it to communicate with each other, but the ones that say, ‘I need to kill time between classes,’ or, ‘I’m bored before bed,’ or, ‘I am trying to relieve stress after working on homework.’” The addictive aspect comes in, O’Connor said, “because users want to be entertained more and more. They are constantly looking for the next thing to talk about with their friends.”

Palmberg said he believes that not all social media use among college students has to be addictive. “It is important for people to view social media as not only something that can be harmful but also something that can be used as a tool. I like to emphasize with my study that it’s not all negative. It is more of an emphasis on moderation. It is possible to use social media responsibly. But just like almost anything, it can be addictive.”

An emphasis on digital well-being

Twice a year, in an effort to get out ahead of digital addiction, students at Gustavus Adolphus College in St. Peter are encouraged to take a deeper look at their social media use and its impact on their mental health. Charlie Potts, the college’s interim dean of students, heads the effort: It’s a clear match with his job and his research interests.

During the semiannual event, known as “Digital Well-Being Week,” Gustavus students learn about the potentially negative impact of social media overuse — as well as strategies for expanding their social networks without the help of technology.

Potts said that event has been held four times so far, and students now tell him they anticipate it. 

“We’ve gotten to the point where we get comments from students saying, ‘It’s that time again,’” he said. Students say they appreciate the information and activities associated with Digital Well-Being Week, Potts continued, and they look forward to a week focused on spending less time with their phones.

“They remember that we put baskets on every table in the dining hall with a little card encouraging them to leave their phones there and instead focus on conversations with others,” he added. “We even include  a card in the basket with conversation starters. Students are excited about it. They know the drill. It is something they like to do that feels good.”

Potts’ own academic research has focused on mental health and belonging. Each fall, he also heads up a campus-wide student survey focused on digital well-being and how to balance phone use with other aspects of mental and physical health.

In the survey, Potts said, “We ask students, ‘How much time do you spend every day on social media? How does it make you feel?’ Students are blown away when they see the number of hours that the average Gustie spends online. The vast majority are in the 4-7 hours a day on their phone range.”

The survey, which uses a motivational style of interviewing to help participants get at the root of why altering their social media behaviors may be valuable to their overall health and well-being, focuses on small changes that might reduce participants’ reliance on technology in favor of face-to-face interaction. 

“We do a lot of conversations with students about strategies they could use,” Potts said. “Things like plugging your phone in across the room while you sleep, leaving it behind while you go to work out at the rec center, subtle changes like that. We also talk about mental health and mindfulness and how…you discern your values about what you are consuming and how that might affect you.”

Though Potts said he has encountered some resistance from students (“You roll with that and help them understand the value of that and think about how they are going to make that change,” he said), he’s also heard a lot of positive student feedback about his survey — and the twice-yearly focus on digital well-being.  

“What we found with our students is they realize deep down that their relationship with their phones and social media was not having a positive impact on their life,” Potts said. “They knew change would be good but they didn’t know how to make change or who to talk to about that or what tools were at their disposal. These options help them understand how to do that.”

Andy Steiner

Andy Steiner is a Twin Cities-based writer and editor. Before becoming a full-time freelancer, she worked as senior editor at Utne Reader and editor of the Minnesota Women’s Press. Email her at  [email protected] .

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