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The relationship between the items of the social media disorder scale and perceived social media addiction

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Abstract

Research has focused on identifying addiction to social media, as it has become a major concern. Of the college students included in the current study, about 50% of them perceived themselves as addicted to social media between 75%–100% and about 20% of them perceived themselves as addicted to social media 100%. Moreover, the current study was the first to investigate if each item of a nine-item Social Media Disorder scale (preoccupation, tolerance, withdrawal, persistence, escape, problems, deception, displacement, and conflict) predicted perceived social media addiction. A stepwise regression analysis was utilized with a significance level of 0.001 to predict the perceived social media addiction as a function of the nine-item Social Media Disorder scale, followed by a hierarchical regression for confirmation. Among the nine-items of the Social Media Disorder Scale, withdrawal and persistence significantly contributed to the model. Specifically, withdrawal predicted 10.2% of perceived social media addiction, while persistence predicted 5.9% of perceived social media addiction.

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Data Availability

The datasets generated during and/or analyzed during the current study are available from the corresponding author on reasonable request.

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Acknowledgements

The author would like to thank the two anonymous referees whose comments significantly improved the presentation of the paper.

The revised manuscript is an original work and is submitted to Current Psychology on 7/15/20 and has not been submitted to nor published anywhere else.

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  1. Fatima Zehra Allahverdi

    Present address: Department of Psychology, Social Sciences University of Ankara, Ankara, Turkey

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    1. Fatima Zehra Allahverdi
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    The sole author, Fatima Zehra Allahverdi, of the study designed, analyzed and interpreted the findings of the study. The author takes responsibility of the integrity of the data and the accuracy of the data analysis.

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    Correspondence to Fatima Zehra Allahverdi.

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    Ethics

    The study was conducted at Kuwait University. Kuwait University does not have an Institutional Review Board (IRB) or an equivalent ethics committee. However, the study was conducted according to the principles expressed in the Declaration of Helinski. The study followed the ethical standards that promote and ensure respect for all human subjects and protect their health and rights by protecting privacy and confidentiality. Verbal informed consent was also provided by each participant. Subjects did not provide their name or any personal information. The data is only held by the researcher and no one has access to it.

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    Allahverdi, F.Z. The relationship between the items of the social media disorder scale and perceived social media addiction. Curr Psychol 41, 7200–7207 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12144-020-01314-x

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