Factors Affecting Social Media Addiction Symptoms

Social media are in common use worldwide, but excessive use has been found to cause many problems. Social media addiction has become an important problem in modern life, causing disruptions in many areas of people’s lives. Therefore, it is important to investigate and identify the factors that cause social media addiction.

The aim of this research was to examine the effects on social media addiction of narcissism, loneliness, social media usage by profession and job requirements, age, and gender. Data were collected from a total of 1547 social media users. The scales developed by other authors in the literature on loneliness and narcissism were used as data collection instruments. In addition, the “Addiction Symptoms and Social Media Use Scale” developed by the researchers was tested with Confirmatory Factor Analysis (CFA). The goodness of fit values of the scale was within acceptable limits. Finally, hypotheses were examined using the Structural Equation Model (SEM). The results demonstrated that as loneliness, narcissism, and the desire to be appreciated increasing to excessive levels, the symptoms of social media addiction also increase. When social media becomes an integral part of a profession and its job requirements, then the tendency for addiction also increases. Females and younger people were found to have a greater tendency towards social media addiction.