How Social Media Addiction is Triggered Among College Students
Addiction is generally associated with gambling, sleeping, eating, and using drugs and alcohol. Like all of these, social media can also be highly addictive. Despite social media platforms having obvious differences from alcohol companies, the ways that they encourage their users’ addiction is similar. Through an algorithm, social media platforms are personalized to users through data provided by users. This strategy ultimately increases the level of addictiveness for social media.
Social media happens to be one of the most important forms of communication for college students. They visit social media apps to engage in many different activities including games, socializing, wasting time, communicating, and posting photos. With social media now being regarded as one of the more common forms of addiction, it has also become more common among college students. For this reason, I want to explore the research question “Why do college students become addicted to social media?”
Since social media addiction can be classified as a behavioral addiction, Griffiths (2013) suggests six essential components to describe a behavior as an addiction: salience, mood modification, tolerance, withdrawal, conflict, and relapse. Salience occurs when social media becomes the most important activity in a person’s life and controls their thinking and behavior. Mood modification is when social media can be seen as a coping strategy. Tolerance is the process whereby increasing amounts of social media activity are required to achieve the former mood-modifying effects (Simsek et al., 2019). Withdrawal symptoms are the feelings or physical effects that occur when people are unable to engage in social media. When spending too much time on social media, people can have interpersonal conflicts, social conflicts, or a complete loss of control. A relapse is the tendency for repeated reversions to earlier patterns of excessive social media use to recur.
Many research studies have taken place to examine the causes of social media addiction. In an article titled “A Qualitative Study on the Reasons for Social Media Addiction,” the author discussed research on this topic. The goal of this research study was to determine the social media usage characteristics and reasons of the students who perceived themselves as problematic social media users. 25 male and female students studying at Gaziosmanpasa University School of Education were chosen for the study. These students were selected because they had previously taken Esgi’s Social Media Usage Questionnaire, which revealed they are addicted individuals in using social media. In this qualitative study, students’ experience, knowledge, and habits related to social media usage were analyzed (Aksoy, 2018). As a document analysis, student participants were required to answer five interview questions on a form sent via email:
1. Sort your social media usage by importance?
2. What was the purpose of using social media when you started using the first social media?
3. Is there a difference in your current social media use needs compared to when you first started using it?
4. Is social media indispensable for you? If yes, why?
After analyzing and coding the data from these questions, the researcher produced some interesting findings. 96% of the students expressed a lack of friends as the main reason why they use social media. Next, 88% of students said that social media is a social activity requirement. 84% of students responded by stating that social media gives them a feeling of fulfilling a task. 80% said that they use social media often so that current events aren’t missed. 64% stated that social media is intermingled with social life.
60% said they need it to make friends, whereas 40% said they don’t have anything better to do. After discovering that 92% of students stated they would never give up using social media, it’s evident that social media has become an activity that is difficult to give up. However, this situation also leads to social media addiction (Aksoy, 2018).
The results of this research study show that students can become addicted to social media for various reasons: a lack of friends, keeping up with events, or even a protection of social relationships. However, the author recommends that conscious use of individuals in the use of social media is essential (Aksoy, 2018). Work should be done continuously to determine the effect of social media on health and social life (Aksoy, 2018).
Sources:
Aksoy, M. E. (2018). A Qualitative Study on the Reasons for Social Media Addiction. European Journal of Educational Research, 7(4), 861–865. Retrieved from https://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/EJ1193424.pdf
Andreassen, C. S., & Pallesen, S. (2014). Social network site addiction — An overview. Current Pharmaceutical Design, 20, 4053–61.
Esgi, N. (2016) Development of Social Media Addiction Test (SMAT17). Journal of Education and Training Studies,
4(10), October 2016, 174–181.
Griffiths, M.D. (2013). Social networking addiction: Emerging themes and issues. Journal of Addiction Research & Therapy, 4(5). doi:10.4172/2155–6105.1000e118
Meyer, M. (2018). [People sitting down near table with assorted laptop computers]. Retrieved from https://unsplash.com/photos/SYTO3xs06fU
Piacquadio, A. (2020). [Student browsing smartphone at table with books]. Retrieved from https://www.pexels.com/photo/student-browsing-smartphone-at-table-with-books-3769982/
Simsek, A., Elciyar, K., Kizilhan, T. (2019). A Comparative Study on Social Media Addiction of High School and University Students. Contemporary Educational Technology. Retrieved from https://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/EJ1213656.pdf
