social media addiction research ideas

SOCIAL MEDIA ADDICTION AND YOUNG PEOPLE: A SYSTEMATIC REVIEW OF LITERATURE

August 2020
7(13):537-541

Universiti Putra Malaysia

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Social Media Addiction

The Cause and Result of Growing Social Problems

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First Online: 21 June 2023
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Troy Smith 7

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Accompanying the growth and increase in popularity of social media have been negative psychosocial and psychological effects associated with its excessive use. Research has shown a positive relationship between addiction-like behaviors associated with social media addiction (SMA) and psychological factors such as loneliness and low self-esteem, which demonstrate a congruency with recognized behavioral addictions. Adding to this congruency are the identified negative outcomes associated with SMA, which include difficulties in time perception, time management, maintaining interpersonal relationships, academic performance and increased prevalence of depression. According to the components model of addiction, the maladaptive behaviors/symptoms associated with problematic social media use (addiction) can be grouped into six dimensions, salience, tolerance, withdrawal, mood modification, conflict, and relapse. Studies have also identified several antecedents related to individual personality traits, fulfillment of psychological needs (relatedness, self-presentation, and social interaction), and perceived discrepancies between current and desired (or expected) interpersonal relationships (e.g., loneliness and low self-esteem). This chapter discusses the current understanding of SMA including its definition, measurement tools, and consequences. Further, it examines the underlying psychological and physiological explanations for addictive behaviors arising from social media use. The examination is based on a review of current theoretical understanding and the range of empirical studies, which examines the phenomena. Lastly, it highlights proposed social and policy approaches to alleviate the problem.

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Smith, T. (2023). Social Media Addiction. In: The Palgrave Handbook of Global Social Problems. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-68127-2_365-1

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DOI : https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-68127-2_365-1

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Research trends in social media addiction and problematic social media use: A bibliometric analysis

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1 Sasin School of Management, Chulalongkorn University, Bangkok, Thailand.
2 Business Administration Division, Mahidol University International College, Mahidol University, Nakhon Pathom, Thailand.
PMID: 36458122
PMCID: PMC9707397
DOI: 10.3389/fpsyt.2022.1017506

Despite their increasing ubiquity in people's lives and incredible advantages in instantly interacting with others, social media's impact on subjective well-being is a source of concern worldwide and calls for up-to-date investigations of the role social media plays in mental health. Much research has discovered how habitual social media use may lead to addiction and negatively affect adolescents' school performance, social behavior, and interpersonal relationships. The present study was conducted to review the extant literature in the domain of social media and analyze global research productivity during 2013-2022. Bibliometric analysis was conducted on 501 articles that were extracted from the Scopus database using the keywords social media addiction and problematic social media use. The data were then uploaded to VOSviewer software to analyze citations, co-citations, and keyword co-occurrences. Volume, growth trajectory, geographic distribution of the literature, influential authors, intellectual structure of the literature, and the most prolific publishing sources were analyzed. The bibliometric analysis presented in this paper shows that the US, the UK, and Turkey accounted for 47% of the publications in this field. Most of the studies used quantitative methods in analyzing data and therefore aimed at testing relationships between variables. In addition, the findings in this study show that most analysis were cross-sectional. Studies were performed on undergraduate students between the ages of 19-25 on the use of two social media platforms: Facebook and Instagram. Limitations as well as research directions for future studies are also discussed.

Keywords: bibliometric analysis; problematic social media use; research trends; social media; social media addiction.

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I Ran 4 Experiments to Break My Social Media Addiction. Here’s What Worked.

Sarah K. Peck

Track and schedule your usage.

Are you spending too much time on social media? If you’d like to break the habit, you can try a few different techniques. One would be to quit cold turkey for a full month. If that sounds too extreme, you can avoid social media at certain times, like after dinner or before breakfast. Blocker tools like Freedom can help you stay on track. A third approach is to try a social “happy hour” — instead of staying off social media at certain times, block out a portion of every day you can look forward to indulging in it. A fourth experiment to try is a taking a day off from social every week, like a Saturday or Sunday. This “day of rest” will help you keep your social habit in check, and make the weekend feel longer.

Social media can connect us to new ideas, help us share our work, and allow previously unheard voices to influence culture. Yet it can also be a highly addictive time-sink if we’re not careful about our goals , purpose , and usage.

SP Sarah K. Peck is an author and startup advisor based in New York City. She’s the founder and executive director of Startup Pregnant, a media company documenting the stories of women’s leadership across work and family, and host of the Startup Pregnant Podcast .

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Open Access

Peer-reviewed

Research Article

The association between depression and addictive social media use during the COVID-19 pandemic: The mediating role of sense of control

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

* E-mail: [email protected]

Affiliation Department of Clinical Psychology, United Arab Emirates University, Al Ain, United Arab Emirates

Roles Methodology, Writing – review & editing

Affiliations Department of Psychology, Sultan Qaboos University, Muscat, Sultanate of Oman, Department of Psychology, Menoufia University, Shebin El-Kom, Egypt

Zahir Vally,
Mai Helmy,
Louis Fourie

Published: September 8, 2023
https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0291034
Peer Review
Reader Comments

COVID-19 precipitated a plethora of mental health difficulties, particularly for those with pre-existing mental health concerns such as depression or addictive tendencies. For some, the distress that emanated from the experience of the pandemic prompted excessive engagement in the safety of online interactions on social media. The present study examined whether variation in individuals’ sense of control explained the association between depression and addictive social media use.

A sample of 1322 participants from two Middle Eastern nations provided data collected during the peak of the pandemic from February to May 2021. A combination of convenience and snowball sampling were used to recruit and collect data from college-aged students enrolled at two universities in Egypt and the United Arab Emirates, respectively. This study adopted a cross-sectional design in which participants completed a self-administered survey that consisted of measures that assessed depressive affect, sense of control, and addictive social media use.

Depression was significantly and positively associated with addictive SMU. Sense of control was negatively related to both depression and SMU and significantly mediated the association between these two variables (β = .62, SE = .03, 95%CI .56, .68).

This study identified a potential protective variable that could be targeted by psychological treatment to ameliorate the potential onset of addictive SMU in individuals with depressive symptoms under conditions of immense psychological distress such as a worldwide pandemic.

Citation: Vally Z, Helmy M, Fourie L (2023) The association between depression and addictive social media use during the COVID-19 pandemic: The mediating role of sense of control. PLoS ONE 18(9): e0291034. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0291034

Editor: Sally Mohammed Farghaly, Alexandria University Faculty of Nursing, EGYPT

Received: January 24, 2023; Accepted: August 20, 2023; Published: September 8, 2023

Copyright: © 2023 Vally 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 paper and its Supporting Information files.

Funding: The author(s) received no specific funding for this work.

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

Introduction

The coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic exacted substantial changes to the daily lives of all individuals [ 1 ]. Government-instituted measures designed to curtail the spread of the disease included mandatory curfews, stay-at-home orders, the wearing of face masks, travel blockades, the closure of schools, businesses, and workplaces, and a general suspension of public life [ 2 , 3 ]. Despite life now having begun to slowly return to a sense of normalcy, a plethora of research has demonstrated that the COVID-19 pandemic resulted in substantial detrimental effects on individuals’ mental health, the long-term effects of which remain unclear at present [ 4 – 6 ]. Moreover, if future pandemics were to arise, an understanding of the factors that might serve a protective function against the onset, and potentially mitigate the exacerbation, of unfavourable mental health outcomes would be particularly beneficial to both researchers and clinicians.

Addictive social media use

A commonly reported consequence of the requirement to engage in ‘spatial distancing’ was the precipitous rise in the excessive use of technology and social media platforms. As individuals were unable to engage with others in real life, most, if not all, interactions were shifted to the online realm, leading to a notable increase in the use of social media platforms in comparison to pre-pandemic rates [ 7 , 8 ]. Addictive social media use (SMU), whilst not presently being a recognised diagnostic construct, reportedly results in considerable symptomology and social dysfunction [ 9 ]. It is characterised by a close emotional bond to the device and/or the platform, individuals experience an immense need to stay connected, and may experience withdrawal symptoms when not connected or when prevented from using the device/ platform [ 10 ]. Griffiths [ 11 ] contends that addictive SMU consists of the following core elements: salience (ruminative and persistent thoughts about using social media), tolerance (progressively increasing periods of usage time is required to garner similar affective experiences from the platform’s use), mood modification (using social media precipitates positive emotions and/ or combats negative emotions), relapse (unsuccessful attempts to decrease use of the platform), withdrawal symptoms (feelings of discomfort when not using social media), and conflicts (the individual’s SMU results in interpersonal difficulties with others).

A substantial body of cross-sectional and longitudinal evidence attests to the contention that excessive and addictive SMU is associated with a range of unfavourable physical and mental health difficulties [ 12 , 13 ]. Despite the contentions of some that caution should be exercised to avoid pathologizing typical behaviours that are characteristic of contemporary society and consequently overstate its prevalence [ 14 – 16 ], the evidence in support of the potential deleterious consequences of excessive SMU is overwhelming. Psychological distress, depression, anxiety, and insomnia have consistently been shown to be associated with addictive SMU when assessed cross-sectionally and this is evident across Asia, Europe, and North America [ 6 , 10 , 17 – 19 ].

Additionally, when assessed longitudinally, baseline levels of addictive SMU appear predictive of psychopathological constructs (i.e., depression, insomnia, suicidal ideation) at ensuing follow-up assessment points. For example, in Germany, longitudinal research has shown baseline levels of additive SMU to be positively associated with the presence of depressive symptoms at six weeks follow-up [ 20 ]. Two further studies have demonstrated that addictive SMU at baseline was associated with suicidal behaviour twelve months later [ 21 , 22 ]. This is evident both in samples of individuals with pre-existing mental health difficulties [ 23 ] as well as college-aged participants drawn from a community sample [ 18 ].

Sense of control and positive mental health

The presence of positive mental health mitigates the potentially detrimental effect of negative life experiences and acts as a protective mechanism reducing risk for the development of mental health difficulties [ 24 – 27 ]. This mitigating effect may be the result of the elevated sense of control and greater degree of resilience that appears to accompany the presence of positive mental health [ 25 , 28 ]. Seligman [ 29 ] proposes that an elevated level of sense of control is essential for the development of positive mental health. Conversely, where individuals exhibit diminished sense of control, amplified helplessness is likely, and individuals will espouse a desire to regain the perception of control [ 30 ]. Such individuals tend to employ the use of dysfunctional coping strategies which may invariably further compound their mental health difficulties. This has been shown to be the case for individuals with substance abuse difficulties and those who engage in excessive technology use such as gaming [ 15 , 31 ].

There is further evidence that some individuals who experience a low sense of control may resort to seeking control in alternate contexts such as via online activities and interactions [ 32 ]. This behaviour is often reinforced, and may become more intensive and excessive, as it tends to produce positive emotions and commensurately reduces the experience of negative emotions, at least in the short-term (e.g., diminished loneliness, depression, anxiety and greater self-reported life satisfaction and wellbeing) [ 7 , 10 , 33 , 34 ]. However, in the long-term, the individuals’ excessive engagement in online interactions is likely to progress and contribute to the development addictive tendencies. The Interaction of Person-Affect-Cognition-Execution (I-PACE) model of addictive behaviour contends that a multitude of psychological and neurobiological factors collectively and cumulatively contribute to the onset or mitigation of addictive tendencies [ 35 ]. Thus, it is imperative that studies investigate the range of factors that might moderate and/ or mediate this association and their potential interaction.

It is likely that unhealthy manifestations of mental health such as depression or, indeed, factors that are beneficial for mental health fall within the parameters of the I-PACE model. This contention is supported by the following evidence. A wealth of evidence has shown that depression is positively related to addictive SMU [ 17 , 20 , 23 ]. Additionally, sense of control has also been demonstrated to be related to addictive SMU [ 28 , 32 , 36 ]. Moreover, Seligman [ 29 ] proposed that elevated levels of sense of control can have an analgesic effect on mental health outcomes. In other words, sense of control mitigates poor mental health and contributes to positive mental health. This is a contention for which there is much substantiating evidence [ 37 – 40 ].

Research conducted during the COVID-19 pandemic also provides further substantiating evidence of this relationship. Where individuals’ sense of control was assessed, this was shown to be positively associated with baseline levels of positive mental health assessed before the onset of COVID-19 [ 28 ]. Additionally, where individuals reported the perception of a low level of control in relation to their experience of the pandemic, they were also shown to exhibit elevated risk for addictive tendencies towards technology [ 36 ]. Considering the demonstrated associations between these variables–mental health difficulties, sense of control, and addictive SMU–and the proposition of the I-PACE model, it is likely that variations in individuals’ sense of control during the midst of the pandemic would mediate the association between depressive symptoms and the onset of addictive SMU.

Theoretical framework

The theoretical model that provides the most comprehensive and appropriate conceptualization of excessive SMU is the I-PACE model [ 35 ]. The model proposes that a number of categories of risk and prognostic factors, which the model separates into various categories, collectively impact the onset of individuals’ excessive engagement with devices and/or technologies. First, the personal determinants category comprises factors related to genetics, biology, personality characteristics, psychopathological variables, and the motives for engaging in excessive use. Second, the risk and resilience category, which Brand et al. [ 35 ] describe as factors that are representative of the individual’s response to the personal determinants factors, comprises cognitive and attention biases, coping strategies, expectancies, craving, and variations in inhibitory control.

The model further contends that the risk and resilience factors likely operate as mediators and moderators in the relationship between the personal determinants factors and the consequent onset of excessive SMU. They may either serve to amplify the effect of the personal determinants factors, and thus increase the likelihood of excessive SMU occurring, or they may serve a protective function and attenuate the resultant effect [ 35 ]. Given this model’s propositions and the evidence of the demonstrated associations between the study’s principal variables, sense of control would be regarded as a resilience factor and thus, if the model’s contentions are valid, would likely serve to diminish the effect of depression on the onset of addictive SMU.

Aims and hypotheses

This study aimed to examine the association between depressive symptomology and addictive SMU during the COVID-19 pandemic and, moreover, whether this proposed association would be mediated by sense of control. The following hypotheses were proposed. It was hypothesized that depression would be positively associated with addictive SMU Hypothesis 1a (H1a). It was also predicted that sense of control would be negatively associated with both depression (H1b) as well as addictive SMU (H1c), respectively. Finally, it was predicted that sense of control would mediate the association between depression and addictive SMU (H2).

Materials and method

Study design.

This study employed a cross-sectional design in which participants, who agreed to participate, completed a survey. This study’s conduct was approved by the Social Sciences Research Ethics Committee at the United Arab Emirates University (Reference number: ERS_2020_6102).

Procedure and participants

This study employed a combination of convenience and snowball sampling approaches to collect data from college-aged participants during the Spring semester of the 2020/2021 academic year with participants drawn from enrolled students at two large federal universities–Menoufia University in Egypt and the United Arab Emirates University in the UAE. Data collection occurred at the peak of the pandemic in both these locations. At that time, in the UAE, strict lockdown measures were in place, universities, schools, and non-essential workplaces were closed with work-from-home being commonplace. Conversely, in Egypt, a less stringent approach was common. Wearing masks in public was not strictly enforced and schools and universities remained operating face-to-face.

The potential sampling frame comprised approximately 2000 participants, these were students who were enrolled in the classes taught by the two principal investigators (ZV and MH) across the two campuses (the targeted classes included students from clinical psychology, abnormal psychology, cognitive psychology, research skills, and creative thinking skills). Students who met the inclusion criteria (i.e., aged at least 18 years old and self-reported as a current user of at least one social media platform) were invited to participate by completing the electronic survey. Advertisements about the study were also placed on physical notice boards and posted to social media accounts typically used by this group of students. The students in the targeted classes were also encouraged to circulate the electronic link to the study’s information and the survey in their social groups, thus introducing a snowball approach to the collection of data.

The link that was made available to participants enabled completion of the electronic survey. The first page displayed an informed consent form which provided background information about the study and principal investigators’ contact details. It also outlined the rights of the participants and the responsibilities of the research team (e.g., that participation was voluntary, issues of confidentiality, the right to withdraw without penalty, and measures employed to secure participants’ data). Written informed consent was obtained before proceeding to commencement of the survey. Data collection occurred from February to May 2021.

Assessment instruments

Demographics..

Participants self-reported their age, gender, relationship status, and registration status (i.e., fulltime, or part-time).

Depression.

The depression subscale of the Depression Anxiety and Stress Scales 21 (DASS-21) [ 41 ] was used to measure depressive affect over the preceding 7 days. This subscale consists of 7 items to which participants respond using a 4-point Likert scale (0 = did not apply to me at all, 3 = applies to me very much or most of the time). Example items include “I felt that I had nothing to look forward to” and “I felt down-hearted and blue”. Higher total scores are indicative of greater levels of depressive affect. The DASS-21 is one of the most prevalently employed measures of depressive and anxious affect and has been shown to be psychometrically valid and reliable across a wide range of languages and cultures including with Arabic-speaking participants [ 10 ]. This Arabic-language version typically demonstrates internal consistency values that range from .88 to .93 [ 42 – 44 ]. In the present study, the Cronbach’s α value was similarly high (.81).

Sense of control.

The 2-item scale first developed and employed by Brailovskaia and Margraf [ 37 ] was used to assess sense of control. The two items are: “Do you experience important areas of your life (i.e., work, free-time, family, etc.) to be uncontrollable, meaning that you cannot, or barely can, influence them?” and “Do you experience these important areas of your life as unpredictable or inscrutable?”. Responses to the items are scored using a 5-point Likert scale and higher total scores are indicative of higher sense of control. The measure’s Cronbach’s α scores have ranged from .79 to .91 [ 32 , 36 , 45 ]. In the present study, internal consistency was .82.

Addictive social media use.

Addictive SMU was measured using the 6-item Bergen Social Media Addiction Scale (BSMAS) [ 9 ]. The items of the scale measure the 6 principal component features of addiction proposed by Griffiths [ 11 ], namely, salience, tolerance, mood modification, relapse, withdrawal, and conflict. Responses to the items are scored using a 5-point Likert scale (1 = very rarely, 5 = very often). Possible total scores can range from 6 to 30 and higher total scores are indicative of more substantial addictive tendencies to SMU. Example items include “I feel an urge to use social media more and more” and I spend a lot of time thinking about social media or planning how to use it”. The scale has a demonstrated unidimensional factor structure and meets a variety of indices indicative of reliability and validity [ 46 , 47 ]. In the present study, internal consistency was equally high (α = .80).

Data analysis.

Descriptive results with regard to the demographic characteristics and the principal variables are reported using means and standard deviations for continuous variables or counts and percentages for categorical variables. As a preliminary investigation of the potential relationships between depression, sense of control, and addictive SMU, a correlational matrix was computed, the results of which are reported using Pearson’s r values and their corresponding significance values. A mediation model was then analysed in which depression was specified as the predictor variable, sense of control as the hypothesized mediator, and addictive SMU as the outcome variable. Gender was specified as a covariate as evidence suggests gendered differences in the use of social media platforms is common.

In the proposed mediational model, path a indicates the relationship between depression and sense of control and path b represents the association between sense of control and addictive SMU. The indirect effect (ab) is reflective of the combined effect of both paths a and b. The association between depression and addictive SMU, the total effect, is represented as path c, whilst the relationship between these two variables (the predictor and outcome) following inclusion of the proposed mediator (sense of control), is indicated as path c’ (the direct effect). All analyses were conducted using SPSS Version 26 and the mediation analyses were conducted using the PROCESS macro version 3.5 ( www.processmacro.org/index.html ) [ 48 ]. The results of all analyses were regarded as statistically significant with a p value of .05.

Descriptive and correlational results

The final sample consisted of 1322 participants whose age ranged from 18 to 32 years (M = 19.50 years, SD = 1.54). The vast majority of the sample were fulltime students (96.4%) while 2.6% were part-time students also simultaneously engaged in minimal employment and 1.0% of the sample were recent graduates from the university but still unemployed at the time of data collection. The sample was primarily comprised of females (75.4%) and single individuals (90.6%). The majority of the sample (n = 1036, 78.4%) were from Egypt and the remaining 21.6% of the sample (n = 286) were from the UAE. These demographic variables did not significantly differ between the two country’s samples (see Table 1 ).

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https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0291034.t001

The computation of bivariate correlations between the three principal variables revealed that depression was significantly and positively associated with addictive SMU (r = .47, p < .001) and negatively associated with sense of control (r = -.11, p < .001) but sense of control and addictive SMU were not significantly related (r = .007, p > .05). A similar pattern of results was evident when the data for each country was examined. Table 2 illustrates the results of the computed correlational matrices (total sample and one for each of the UAE and Egyptian samples).

https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0291034.t002

Mediation results

A mediation analysis was computed, and this revealed the following. The overall model was significant (F(2, 1319) = 182.526, R 2 = .217, p < .001). Path a was significant, depression was significantly associated with sense of control (β = -.04, SE = .01, 95%CI -.06, -.02) and so too was path b, sense of control was significantly associated with addictive SMU (β = .23, SE = .09, 95%CI .05, .40). Moreover, the total effect of depression on addictive SMU was also significant (β = .61, SE = .03, 95%CI .55, .67) and this association remained significant when the indirect effect of the mediator was examined. Sense of control emerged as a significant mediator of the association between depression and addictive SMU (path ab) (β = .62, SE = .03, 95%CI .56, .68). Fig 1 depicts the results of this mediation analysis and illustrates the total, direct and indirect effects.

Path a denotes the association between depression and sense of control; path b indicates the path between sense of control and addictive SMU; path c (the total effect) is reflective of the basic relationship between depression and addictive SMU; and path c’ (the direct effect) denotes the link between depression and addictive SMU following inclusion of the mediator. SMU = social media use.

https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0291034.g001

This study sought to examine the potential mediational role of sense of control in the relationship between depressive symptoms and addictive SMU within the context of the COVID-19 pandemic. Doing so was highly pertinent given the evidence that rapidly emerged during the initial stages of the pandemic that rates of technology use and, in particular, excessive and problematic manifestations of SMU exponentially proliferated [ 49 ]. The results of this study revealed that depression was significantly and positively associated with addictive SMU (in confirmation of H1a). Sense of control was negatively associated with both depression (confirming H1b) and addictive SMU (confirming H1c). Moreover, sense of control significantly mediated the association of depression with addictive SMU (in confirmation of H2).

These results suggest that depressive symptoms may represent a risk factor for the development of addictive tendencies towards SMU. Our results produced statistically significant associations at the correlational level across all potential comparisons (i.e., the total sample and each of the country-specific subsamples) and resulted in statistically significant associations within the context of the mediation analysis. This provides additional substantiating evidence for the contentions of the I-PACE model and is in line with the findings of preceding empirical evidence [ 17 , 18 , 35 , 50 ]. Specifically, where individuals experience depressive symptoms, this appears to elevate the degree of risk for the consequent onset of addictive SMU. Individuals may indeed actively seek out social media platforms and the access to information (about their experienced difficulties) that it facilitates and other individuals, in the online realm, can be readily and easily accessed from whom to elicit support and emotional comfort, thus increasing dependence and excessive use of the platform and device [ 17 , 23 ].

Additionally, one of the potential mechanisms that creates the association between these variables appear to be the precipitous impact that depressive symptoms exact on individuals’ sense of control. This suggestion appears sound when considered within the context of preceding research as well as the current understanding of depressive illness. Specifically, a multiplicity of research confirms that individuals with depression hold self-denigrating beliefs centred around their own lack of capacity to successfully manage the demands and responsibilities of their lives [ 51 – 53 ]. They frequently believe that their lives and their futures are out of their control and commensurately do not possess the capacity to execute some form of control [ 54 , 55 ]. This is one of the principal contentions on which the cognitive model of depression is based [ 54 ]. Additionally, previous research also indicates that an elevated sense of control predicts lower levels of psychological distress, greater adaptation to stressful life events (e.g., transition to parenthood), and buffers the impact that multiple stressful life events have on the consequent development of mental health difficulties such as depression [ 38 , 56 , 57 ]. Thus, the evidenced association of depression and sense of control in this study appears to concur with preceding literature.

Our results also concur with existing research by highlighting a potential target for psychological intervention where individuals are assessed to be at risk for the onset of addictive SMU. Interventions that have specifically targeted the enhancement of individuals’ sense of self-control and their self-efficacy beliefs have demonstrated efficacious outcomes in relation to depression, anxiety, stress, general wellbeing, improved resilience, health-related behaviours, and greater pain tolerance [ 58 – 60 ]. Where individuals with depressive symptomology are assessed to be at risk for addictive SMU, a focused psychological intervention designed to target the elevation of their sense of control and self-efficacy may produce an analgesic effect and diminish depressive symptoms; however, this contention should be definitively tested within the context of a rigorous randomized controlled trial.

The results of the mediation analysis also suggest that improving individuals’ sense of control may hypothetically mitigate the development of addictive SMU, however, as with the above suggestion in relation to depression, a definitive conclusion cannot be drawn given the cross-sectional design of the present study. The COVID-19 pandemic precipitated immense uncertainty. Many individuals struggled to manage the profound and relatively instantaneously imposed restrictions to daily life, the uncertainty of not knowing how the pandemic would proceed, and the feelings of loss, both tangible (i.e., loss of income, employment, death of loved ones) and abstract (i.e., loss control and certainty), that invariably accompanied the experience of the pandemic [ 1 , 3 ]. Evidence that emerged during the pandemic demonstrated that some individuals who were unable to resiliently manage these burdensome aspects of the pandemic developed dysfunctional coping strategies such as addictive SMU [ 28 , 37 ]. To escape the reality of a monumentally challenging life experience, some individuals with pre-existing mental health difficulties and/ or risk factors (e.g., a depressive illness) directed their attention towards the online realm to garner psychosocial support, or as a means of distraction, or, for some, this served a mood modification function [ 10 ]. Research indicates that individuals with higher levels of perceived control tend to be more resilient and are able to produce functional coping strategies when navigating distressing and uncertain experiences. Moreover, the experience of functional coping, successfully managing the demands of a challenging life experience, elicits positive emotions (i.e., wellbeing, joy, relief, mastery) and these, in turn, are likely to reduce the desire to turn one’s attention away from the real-world towards online interactions. Therefore, this reinforces this study’s proposition that the promotion of perceived sense of control in individuals at risk of mental health difficulties during stressful circumstances is a worthwhile psychotherapeutic course of action, and this is substantiated by our findings.

Limitations and directions for future research

The following limitations should be borne in mind. First, the cross-sectional design of the study precludes a determination of potential causality. This is especially relevant when considering the principal contention of the examined mediational model. Despite evidence of the potential ameliorative effect that elevating an individual’s sense of control may have on both diminishing depressive symptoms and reducing the likelihood that addictive SMU will ensue, a longitudinal design with multiple assessment points following the delivery of some form of intervention would be needed to reliably assess the impact that improving sense of control might have, if any, on these psychopathological outcomes. Potential interventions to be tested could take the form of meditation [ 61 ], those informed by the concept of salutogenesis [ 62 ], strengths-based interventions [ 63 ], or programs targeting self-defeating cognitions and beliefs [ 64 ]. Thus, while this study has identified a potential target for intervention (i.e., sense of control), the effect of such an intervention should be determined in future studies.

Second, only sense of control was assessed as a mediator. There may be any number of alternate constructs that might similarly mediate this relationship, constructs that were not assessed on this occasion. Specifically, the cacophony of factors that have been shown to be associated with or reflective of positive mental health may be expected to demonstrate a similar effect and, conversely, factors known to compound mental health outcomes may also demonstrate an association between these variables. For example, mindfulness, valued living, committed action, personality, and lifestyle factors such as eating behaviour or the consumption of tobacco and/or alcohol might be considered [ 65 ]. Furthermore, constructs that have been shown to be associated with addictive SMU might also be considered for inclusion in further analyses–these might include internet gaming disorder [ 9 ], attachment style [ 46 ] or personality traits [ 66 ].

Third, participants’ daily duration of social media use or the specific social media platforms that the sample preferred were not measured. These variables are highly relevant to any consideration of addictive SMU as duration of use, and the nature of social media use appears consistently related to the onset of addictive tendencies [ 4 , 10 ]. Additionally, variations in the nature of SMU (i.e., whether use is active or passive) differentially impacts the development of comorbid psychopathological outcomes. Specifically, active engagement on social media platforms (e.g., posting status updates, writing comments to others, and uploading photos) appears more prevalently related to the development of addictive SMU whereas passive use (i.e., browsing content and reading others’ comments) is associated with greater levels of envy, depression, and anxiety [ 7 , 67 ]. Future studies should specifically assess duration of use, the features and platforms preferred, as well as whether SMU is active or passive to enable a determination of their differential effect.

Finally, the reliability and validity of the BSMAS in this population remains uncertain. The scale itself was originally developed with specific reference to Facebook use and while this scale has now been used extensively used, including in Arabic-speaking samples [ 4 ], its results should be interpreted with caution in the absence of an established psychometrically validated version.

The result of this study indicates that, under environmental conditions of immense psychological distress–such as a global pandemic–individuals with pre-existing mental health difficulties, in particular depressive disorders, are at an especially elevated risk for the development of addictive SMU.

Implications

This study suggests that targeting individuals’ sense of control may diminish the potential risk for addictive SMU that is presented by the confluence of pre-existing mental health difficulties and environmental stress. It has long been noted that individuals with depression do indeed report a diminished sense of subjective control over their lives and the events that occur within it as well as the commensurate finding that, where individuals possess higher levels of control, the risk of associated psychological difficulties such as anger, anxiety or depression, precipitously diminishes [ 68 , 69 ]. Given that this study now indicates that this relationship also occurred within the context of the COVID-19 pandemic and was elevated by the presence of co-occurring excessive SMU, it would be worthwhile exploring the potential utility of psychological interventions specifically targeting the elevation of sense of control amongst who present with the confluence of these two psychological difficulties. The principal implication of this study is therefore the identification of a potential target for psychotherapeutic intervention for individuals at elevated risk of depression and comorbid excessive SMU. As sense of control represents a form of maladaptive thinking [ 38 ], a cognitively-oriented approach seems most prudent. Positive psychology interventions have also proven to be effective in combating diminished control and elevating wellbeing [ 70 , 71 ], and their potential utility within this context and for individuals with this specific form of presentation, should be explored. Additionally, where individuals find themselves in circumstances that are by their very definition uncertain, such as a global pandemic, structured programs of psychoeducation by prove beneficial as the provision of context-specific information may create a degree of certainty.

Supporting information

S1 file. complete dataset for the study (spss datafile)..

Dataset on which the study’s analyses are based.

https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0291034.s001

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62. Langeland E., et al., Effectiveness of Interventions to Enhance the Sense of Coherence in the Life Course, in The Handbook of Salutogenesis, Mittelmark M.B., et al., Editors. 2022, Springer International Publishing: Cham. p. 201–219.

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Is Social Media Addictive? Here’s What the Science Says.

A major lawsuit against Meta has placed a spotlight on our fraught relationship with online social information.

By Matt Richtel

A group of 41 states and the District of Columbia filed suit on Tuesday against Meta , the parent company of Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp and Messenger, contending that the company knowingly used features on its platforms to cause children to use them compulsively, even as the company said that its social media sites were safe for young people.

“Meta has harnessed powerful and unprecedented technologies to entice, engage and ultimately ensnare youth and teens,” the states said in their lawsuit filed in federal court. “Its motive is profit.”

The accusations in the lawsuit raise a deeper question about behavior: Are young people becoming addicted to social media and the internet? Here’s what the research has found.

What Makes Social Media So Compelling?

Experts who study internet use say that the magnetic allure of social media arises from the way the content plays to our neurological impulses and wiring, such that consumers find it hard to turn away from the incoming stream of information.

David Greenfield, a psychologist and founder of the Center for Internet and Technology Addiction in West Hartford, Conn., said the devices lure users with some powerful tactics. One is “intermittent reinforcement,” which creates the idea that a user could get a reward at any time. But when the reward comes is unpredictable. “Just like a slot machine,” he said. As with a slot machine, users are beckoned with lights and sounds but, even more powerful, information and reward tailored to a user’s interests and tastes.

Adults are susceptible, he noted, but young people are particularly at risk, because the brain regions that are involved in resisting temptation and reward are not nearly as developed in children and teenagers as in adults. “They’re all about impulse and not a lot about the control of that impulse,” Dr. Greenfield said of young consumers.

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Mental Health

Scientists Can’t Decide if Social Media Is Addictive

S ocial media can be harmful. That's something all behavioral researchers can agree on. There is much less consensus on how exactly its harmful use is defined, and whether or not there’s a corresponding beneficial way to use social media. And at the very center of this academic debate is the question: Can a person become addicted to social media?

Settling on an answer to this question has a surprising number of implications: for the internet, for policy (most notably in a recent lawsuit against Meta ), and even for people who suffer from or treat more well-defined forms of addiction. Attempts to do so have resulted in fairly conflicting findings, explains Niklas Ihssen, an associate psychology professor at Durham University in the U.K. In particular, some studies suggest abstaining from social media can improve mood and well-being, while others seem to argue that stepping away from the screens can cause serious withdrawal effects that mirror those present in chemical addictions. “There’s tension between those two strands of research,” Ihssen says.

Studying 'digital detox'

A new study, led by Ihssen’s postgraduate student Michael Wadsley and published Nov. 8 in the journal PLOS ONE , attempts to reconcile this conflict.

Using activity-tracking apps and surveys, Wadsley and Ihssen followed 51 students for 15 days, including a week during which they were instructed to avoid social networking sites including Facebook, Instagram, and TikTok. The participants were then brought in for final surveys and exercises afterward. Around a third of the participants had existing social-media behaviors that qualified as problematic, or harmful to their functioning, on the most widely-accepted scale of social media behavior.

Read More: The ‘Dopamine Detox’ Is Having a Moment

Wadsley and Ihssen searched in the participants’ responses for symptoms of withdrawal in line with those found in substance-use disorders, such as relapses and increased consumption following abstinence. Though 87% of the participants weren’t able to stay off of social media entirely, their use time decreased to an average of 30 minutes, down from between three and four hours per day, and remained lower than before even after the week of abstinence had passed. “If there’s something like withdrawal, we would expect those cravings to go up after a while,” says Ihssen. But in both usage time and in the results of a test given to participants at the end of the week that recorded their reactions to seeing social media app icons, the sharp craving the chemical effects of withdrawal can cause just didn’t manifest as expected.

Ultimately, however, this study can’t conclusively answer on its own whether social media is addictive. In order to reach a consensus on that question, independent study teams working with small sample sizes, like Wadsley and Ihssen, need to use a set of shared metrics, methodologies, and definitions, says David Zendle, a lecturer at the University of York in the U.K. One 2021 study found that across 55 papers on social media addiction, 25 distinct theories and models were used.

When researchers can’t agree on the right place to dig, nobody gets very deep. This current gray zone is “extremely dangerous,” says Zendle. If social media is falsely framed as addictive, “individuals will be treated in a way that is inappropriate to their lives, causing detriment over the long term,” and it delegitimizes the severity of true addictions, he says. If it’s as addictive as illicit drugs, and science misses it, a huge corporate threat to public health could be running unchecked. “This is a nice small-scale study,” says Zendle. “What we need are radical, gigantic studies, to the point where when you see nothing going on, you are extremely confident that nothing really is going on.”

Part of the challenge of determining whether or not problematic social media use is classified as an addiction is that behavioral addictions are newly defined, says Zendle, with gambling addiction the only such disorder recognized by official diagnostic criteria. In gambling, researchers first noticed that a stimulus other than a chemical substance could create near-identical effects in the brain. “That transposition unlocked the world of behavioral addictions,” says Zendle. “But what we are now wondering as a community is where else it might be helpful to transpose this.”

Parallels with video game resarch

To see the long-term consequences of these sorts of competing paradigms in research, just look to the debate surrounding the harms of video-game violence, says Zendle, where there’s “an enormously mixed evidence base.” Because of back-and-forth “bad faith” research, he says, scientists are unable to advise psychologists, lawmakers, and game designers in any meaningful way, so drowned out has any consistent truth become.

Wadsley and Ihssen’s study feels more balanced not only because it marks another strike against the addiction theory, but also because it found none of the equivocally positive effects on mood that other studies have suggested comes from a social media break or “digital detox.” Instead, the results showed a varied mix of effects on mood, which most closely resembles the actual variation on findings across research on the topic, rather than sharply negative or positive effects that many individual studies show.

This null finding isn’t inconsequential. Instead, it’s as strong an indicator as research has seen that current thinking about social media and addiction just might not line up with what’s actually happening inside the brain. Social media use is far too complicated and varied to tackle as an addictive substance, says Ihssen. “Even though it can cause issues with excessive use … I think we should not over-pathologize those behaviors.”

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Teens are spending nearly 5 hours daily on social media. Here are the mental health outcomes

Forty-one percent of teens with the highest social media use rate their overall mental health as poor or very poor

Vol. 55 No. 3 Print version: page 80

Social Media and Internet
Technology and Design

teen showing her father something on her smartphone

Percentage of teens with the highest social media use who rate their overall mental health as poor or very poor , compared with 23% of those with the lowest use. For example, 10% of the highest use group expressed suicidal intent or self-harm in the past 12 months compared with 5% of the lowest use group, and 17% of the highest users expressed poor body image compared with 6% of the lowest users.

Average number of hours a day that U.S. teens spend using seven popular social media apps, with YouTube , TikTok , and Instagram accounting for 87% of their social media time. Specifically, 37% of teens say they spend 5 or more hours a day, 14% spend 4 to less than 5 hours a day, 26% spend 2 to less than 4 hours a day, and 23% spend less than 2 hours a day on these three apps.

[ Related: Potential risks of content, features, and functions: The science of how social media affects youth ]

Percentage of the highest frequency social media users who report low parental monitoring and weak parental relationships who said they had poor or very poor mental health , compared with 25% of the highest frequency users who report high parental monitoring and strong parental relationships . Similarly, 22% of the highest users with poor parental relationships and monitoring expressed thoughts of suicide or self-harm compared with 2% of high users with strong parental relationships and monitoring.

Strong parental relationships and monitoring significantly cut the risk of mental health problems among teen social media users, even among those with significant screen time stats.

Rothwell, J. (October 27, 2023). Parenting mitigates social media-linked mental health issues . Gallup. Survey conducted between June 26–July 17, 2023, with responses by 6,643 parents living with children between ages 3 and 19, and 1,591 teens living with those parents. https://news.gallup.com/poll/513248/parenting-mitigates-social-media-linked-mental-health-issues.aspx .

Rothwell, J. (2023). How parenting and self-control mediate the link between social media use and mental health . https://ifstudies.org/ifs-admin/resources/briefs/ifs-gallup-parentingsocialmediascreentime-october2023-1.pdf .

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Notre Dame researchers leverage social media data to develop a new AI-driven model for opioid misuse prevention in teenagers and young adults

September 12, 2024 September 12, 2024

a student looks at a smartphone while on a bike

Teenagers spend over five hours on social media each day – their online interactions might reveal clues that save them from the opioid epidemic.

Graduating classes are dwindling as the opioid epidemic claims the lives of high school and college-aged adolescents from communities throughout the United States.

America’s increased activity on social media platforms has heightened the risks of opioid overdose and drug misuse , while research to promote personalized health, safety and intervention recommendations to the nearly thirty percent of at-risk Teenagers and Young Adults (TYAs) has been lacking.

Now, researchers at the University of Notre Dame are developing a new artificial intelligence (AI) driven paradigm leveraging social media data to provide insights into personalized interventions for reducing TYA opioid misuse and death.

Recently, the US National Science Foundation awarded a $1.5 million grant for a four-year project to use large-scale social media data generated from TYAs, roughly ages 15 to 25, to develop a messaging platform tailored to individual risks and community contexts aiming to promote community resilience against opioid misuse and addiction.

“Opioid overdose deaths have continued to increase across the country; specifically, TYAs are disproportionately affected by and particularly vulnerable to misuse and addiction. Parents of at-risk teens who have been impacted by the opioid epidemic frequently contact me to share their stories,” said Yanfang (Fanny) Ye , the Galassi Family Collegiate Professor in Computer Science and Engineering and Associate Director of Applied Analytics for the Lucy Family Institute for Data & Society .

Ye will lead the project, “A New AI-driven Paradigm to Promote Community Resilience for Teenagers and Young Adults in Preventing Opioid Misuse and Addiction.” Input from fourteen community partners, including the parents of at-risk youth, medical clinicians, emergency response services personnel, representatives from the National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA) and public school leadership will help direct the project’s design and development and incorporate linkage to community-based prevention and treatment services.

An expert in AI and machine learning, Ye has conducted multiple projects to combat the opioid epidemic through AI innovation. In 2023, her work was broadcast on NBC as part of the University’s award-winning “What Would You Fight For?” series, which showcases the work, scholarly achievements, and global impact of Notre Dame faculty, students and alumni.

“By analyzing data collected from platforms where TYAs are actively engaged, we can develop a valuable network of relationships that identify the risks of opioid misuse, and offer customized prevention and intervention options directed at this distinct yet vulnerable age group,” Ye said.

Developing an application to detect at-risk TYAs is pivotal to the project’s success.

Ye is working with researchers from the Applied Analytics & Emerging Technology Lab (AETL) within the Lucy Family Institute to apply a graph-based deep learning approach to identify TYAs who are most likely to be at risk of opioid misuse and addiction. Graph neural networks (GNNs) are artificial intelligence applications that are designed to build relationships between visualizations, models or graphed data. Recently, GNNs have been used for weather forecasting models and for the discovery of novel antibiotics and polymers .

Ye and the AETL team will use the GNNs and large language models (LLMs) to derive key risk factors from identified at-risk groups to develop a safety-enhanced multi-modal learning framework for tailored message generation. The applications will provide personalized, interactive and educational messages to TYAs based on their community characteristics and individual circumstances in preventing opioid misuse and addiction.

“The University of Notre Dame is guided by a moral imperative to address the challenges of society’s most vulnerable populations, including those facing the dangers of the opioid epidemic” said Nitesh Chawla , founding director of the Lucy Family Institute and the Frank M. Freimann Professor of Computer Science and Engineering. Chawla is a co-principal investigator on the project. He adds, “Through data-driven AI innovation, the Lucy Family Institute is committed to providing impactful research that can promote resilience and well-being for future generations.”

Other co-principal investigators on the project include Erin Winstanley , professor of medicine at the University of Pittsburgh, and Chuxu Zhang , associate professor of computer science and engineering at the University of Connecticut.

The outcomes of the project will be made publicly available for wide distribution.

For more information about the Lucy Family Institute’s Applied Analytics & Emerging Technology Lab, please visit the website .

To learn more about Ye’s current research, please visit http://yes-lab.org/ .

Originally posted at lucyinstitute.nd.edu by Christine Grashorn on September 11, 2024.

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Articles on Teens and social media

Displaying 1 - 20 of 25 articles.

Instead of banning kids from online spaces, here’s what we should offer them instead

Amanda Third , Western Sydney University

Should parents be worried about social media? We asked 5 experts

Judith Ireland , The Conversation and Matt Garrow , The Conversation

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Joanne Orlando , Western Sydney University

Kids are digital natives. They have ideas to help protect children from being harmed online

Faith Gordon , Australian National University

Albanese promises to legislate minimum age for kids’ access to social media

Michelle Grattan , University of Canberra

South Australia is proposing a law to ban kids under 14 from social media. How would it work?

Lisa M. Given , RMIT University

From selfie injuries to viral stunts, social media can be risky for children. Could a ban help?

Samuel Cornell , UNSW Sydney and Amy Peden , UNSW Sydney

Social media can hamper teenagers figuring out who they want to be. Banning it until 16 is a good idea

Rachael Sharman , University of the Sunshine Coast

What can you do if you think your teen already has unhealthy social media habits?

Carmel Taddeo , University of South Australia and Barbara Spears , University of South Australia

‘I don’t really wanna consume his content’: what do young Australian men think of Andrew Tate?

Amanda Keddie , Deakin University ; Josh Roose , Deakin University , and Michael Flood , Queensland University of Technology

We research online ‘misogynist radicalisation’. Here’s what parents of boys should know

Steven Roberts , Monash University and Stephanie Wescott , Monash University

Other countries have struggled to control how kids access the internet. What can Australia learn?

Is social media making you unhappy? The answer is not so simple

Melissa Humphries , University of Adelaide and Lewis Mitchell , University of Adelaide

We know social media bans are unlikely to work. So how can we keep young people safe online?

Culturally diverse teens greatly benefit from social media – banning it would cause harm

Amelia Johns , University of Technology Sydney

Politics with Michelle Grattan: Peter Malinauskas on political donations, kids on social media, and the nuclear option

Tech solutions to limit kids’ access to social media are fraught with problems, including privacy risks

Age verification for pornography access? Our research shows it fails on many levels

Zahra Stardust , Queensland University of Technology and Alan McKee , University of Sydney

Grattan on Friday: age verification for social media is no easy task, but the government can’t sit by and do nothing

Age verification for social media would impact all of us. We asked parents and kids if they actually want it

Justine Humphry , University of Sydney ; Catherine Page Jeffery , University of Sydney ; Jonathon Hutchinson , University of Sydney , and Olga Boichak , University of Sydney

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International Literacy Day: How picture books can open up discussion about social media with children

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Should we ban young children from social media? Do children know the pitfalls of TikTok, Instagram and Snapchat? To coincide with the celebration of International Literacy Day, we talked to Dr Cristina Costa, from our School of Education, who has been working on a digital literacy project with children at a County Durham primary school. She explains how her project co-producing picture books about social media topics with children can help to better understand how young people view social media.

What is your research about?

My research is focused on how people use digital platforms, like social media. I am particularly interested in exploring how digital technology fits in with education and society and how young people’s experiences take shape. My most recent projects explore how teenagers and primary school aged children develop their digital literacies.

You recently worked on a project to learn about how young children view social media. What did you learn?

In general terms, young children are very keen on using social media and, as you would expect, are technically quite good at it.

They are generally quite aware of some of the pitfalls of social media and are often told the “do’s” and “don’ts” to make them aware of the dangers. However, this kind of risk management approach doesn’t necessarily create space for them to talk about their own experiences (good or bad), question certain practices or discuss what they think of as ethical behaviour when online.

This is what we have tried to do by creating space for students to talk about their own experiences and practices and what they see other people do. Our goal has always been one of not telling them what to do or not do, but rather have them arrive at their own conclusions.

The project involved the co-production of books with the children. What message did that help get across?

The picture books we are co-creating with primary school children are about social media, privacy and digital footprint. They have been designed to capture the discussions we had with the children on these issues via the development of ‘cultural circles’. The books have also allowed the young people to represent their thinking about such issues in their own words, via the text used and the illustrations they created, which are now being adapted by a professional illustrator. We hope that the books will provide a good basis for discussion and will become a good resource for other children, parents and teachers who may wish to discuss such topics. We are very excited about the books which will be launched in November.

What would you say to policymakers or worried parents who want to ban the use of social media for young children?

I understand what they are getting at as at the end of the day we all want to protect people from the potential hazards of the internet/social media. That said, banning the use of social media for young people teaches them very little, if anything at all. I think it is more important to engage young people in the discussion of digital practices as well as screen time - on a regular basis as well as modelling behaviour. Young people are very capable of reasoning about such issues and when prompted can provide very insightful views and be highly critical and reflexive of their own and others’ digital practices. I think we all benefit from such discussions.

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Find out more about the work of Dr Cristina Costa .
Learn more about International Day of Literacy .
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Social Networking Sites and Addiction: Ten Lessons Learned

Online social networking sites (SNSs) have gained increasing popularity in the last decade, with individuals engaging in SNSs to connect with others who share similar interests. The perceived need to be online may result in compulsive use of SNSs, which in extreme cases may result in symptoms and consequences traditionally associated with substance-related addictions. In order to present new insights into online social networking and addiction, in this paper, 10 lessons learned concerning online social networking sites and addiction based on the insights derived from recent empirical research will be presented. These are: (i) social networking and social media use are not the same; (ii) social networking is eclectic; (iii) social networking is a way of being; (iv) individuals can become addicted to using social networking sites; (v) Facebook addiction is only one example of SNS addiction; (vi) fear of missing out (FOMO) may be part of SNS addiction; (vii) smartphone addiction may be part of SNS addiction; (viii) nomophobia may be part of SNS addiction; (ix) there are sociodemographic differences in SNS addiction; and (x) there are methodological problems with research to date. These are discussed in turn. Recommendations for research and clinical applications are provided.

1. Introduction

The history of social networking sites (SNSs) dates back to 1997, when the first SNS SixDegrees emerged as a result of the idea that individuals are linked via six degrees of separation [ 1 ], and is conceived as “the small world problem” in which society is viewed as becoming increasingly inter-connected [ 2 ]. In 2004, Facebook , was launched as an online community for students at Harvard University and has since become the world’s most popular SNS [ 3 ]. In 2016, there were 2.34 billion social network users worldwide [ 4 ]. In the same year, 22.9% of the world population used Facebook [ 5 ]. In 2015, the average social media user spent 1.7 h per day on social media in the USA and 1.5 h in the UK, with social media users in the Philippines having the highest daily use at 3.7 h [ 6 ]. This suggests social media use has become an important leisure activity for many, allowing individuals to connect with one another online irrespective of time and space limitations.

It is this kind of connecting or the self-perceived constant need to connect that has been viewed critically by media scholars. Following decades of researching technology-mediated and online behaviors, Turkle [ 7 ] claims overreliance on technology has led to an impoverishment of social skills, leaving individuals unable to engage in meaningful conversations because such skills are being sacrificed for constant connection, resulting in short-term attention and a decreased ability to retain information. Individuals have come to be described as “alone together”: always connected via technology, but in fact isolated [ 8 ]. The perceived need to be online may lead to compulsive use of SNSs, which in extreme cases may result in symptoms and consequences traditionally associated with substance-related addictions. Since the publication of the first ever literature review of the empirical studies concerning SNS addiction in 2011 [ 3 ], the research field has moved forward at an increasingly rapid pace. This hints at the scientific community’s increasing interest in problematic and potentially addictive social networking use. In order to present new insights into online social networking and addiction, in this paper, 10 lessons learned concerning online social networking sites and addiction based on the insights derived from recent empirical research will be presented. These are: (i) social networking and social media use are not the same; (ii) social networking is eclectic; (iii) social networking is a way of being; (iv) individuals can become addicted to using social networking sites; (v) Facebook addiction is only one example of SNS addiction; (vi) fear of missing out (FOMO) may be part of SNS addiction; (vii) smartphone addiction may be part of SNS addiction; (viii) nomophobia may be part of SNS addiction; (ix) there are sociodemographic differences in SNS addiction; and (x) there are methodological problems with research to date. These are discussed in turn.

2. 10 Lessons Learned from Recent Empirical Literature

2.1. social networking and social media use are not the same.

Social networking and social media use have often been used interchangeably in the scientific literature. However, they are not the same. Social media refers to the web 2.0 capabilities of producing, sharing, and collaborating on content online (i.e., user-generated content, implying a social element). Accordingly, social media use includes a wide range of social applications, such as collaborative projects, weblogs, content communities, social networking sites, virtual game worlds, and virtual social worlds [ 9 ], each of which will be addressed below.

Collaborative projects can be shared and worked on jointly and simultaneously using cloud-based computing. Two different types can be distinguished: Wikis allow for creating, removing and modifying online content (e.g., Wikipedia ). Social bookmarking applications, on the other hand, allow for numbers of people to accumulate and appraise websites (e.g., Delicious ). Taken together, collaborative projects may produce a superior end result in comparison to individual projects [ 9 ], which can be linked to the concept of collective intelligence, whereby the intelligence in the group is greater than the sum of its parts [ 10 ].

Weblogs (or “blogs”) can also be considered social media. Blogs allow individuals to share personal online diaries and information (sometimes in the form of images and videos), which may or may not be commented upon by other internet users. Next, there are content communities and video-sharing sites (e.g., YouTube ). Content may include videos, but also text (e.g., BookCrossing ), photographs (e.g., Instagram ), and PowerPoint presentations (e.g., Slideshare ), and in most cases, there is no a need for individuals to have personal profiles, and if they do, these tend to include limited personal information. Virtual game worlds allow users to create an online alter ego in the form of an avatar and to play with other players in large gaming universes (and the next section covers gaming in more detail). Kaplan and Haenlein [ 9 ] differentiate these from virtual social worlds from virtual game worlds, whereby the former allow individuals to create online characters which live in an alternative virtual world that is similar to their real life environments on the one hand, but defies physical laws. Arguably the best example of these virtual social worlds is Second Life , populated by human-like avatars, who engage in activities users engage in on an everyday basis, such as furnishing houses, going shopping, and meeting friends.

Finally, there are social networking sites, which we have previously defined as “virtual communities where users can create individual public profiles, interact with real-life friends, and meet other people based on shared interests” ([ 3 ]; p. 3529). Social networking is particularly focused on connecting people, which does not apply to a number of the other social media applications outlined above. Engaging in social networking comprises a specific type of social media use, therefore they are not synonymous. Consequently, studies that have examined social media addiction and social networking addiction may also be using the terms interchangeably, suggesting nosological imprecision.

2.2. Social Networking Is Eclectic

Despite social networking being one type of social media use (as outlined in the previous section), the behavior is inherently eclectic because it includes a variety of apps and services that can be engaged in. For instance, social networking can be the use of traditional social networking sites, such as Facebook. Facebook can be considered an ‘egocentric’ SNS (rather than the previously more common virtual communities that focused on shared interests between members) because it allows individuals to represent themselves using individual profiles and wall posts. These can contain text and audiovisual content, whilst connecting to friends who often appear as real life friends and acquaintances given the main motivation of individuals to use SNSs such as Facebook is to maintain their connections [ 3 ].

In 2016, the most popular social networking site was Facebook with 1712 million active users [ 5 ]. Facebook has long established its supremacy in terms of active members, with membership numbers steadily increasing by 17%–20% annually [ 11 ]. Facebook is a very active network. Every minute, 510,000 comments are posted; 293,000 statuses are updated; and 136,000 photos are uploaded, whilst the average user spends approximately 20 min daily on the site [ 11 ].

Over the past few years, new networks have emerged that have gradually risen in popularity, particularly amongst younger generations. Instagram was launched in 2010 as a picture sharing SNS, claiming to “allow you to experience moments in your friends’ lives through pictures as they happen” [ 12 ]. In 2016, Instagram had 500 m active users [ 5 ]. Snapchat was launched in 2011 [ 13 ] as an SNS that allows users to message and connect with others using a smartphone and to send texts, videos, and make calls. Snapchat is different from other networks in that it has an inherently ephemeral nature, whereby any messages are automatically deleted shortly after the receiver has viewed them, allowing an increased experience of perceived privacy and safety online [ 14 ]. However, teenagers are especially aware of the transitory nature of Snapchat messages and therefore take screenshots and keep them stored on their mobile phones or in the cloud, simply to have proof of conversations and visuals spread on this medium. The privacy advantage of the medium is thereby countered. Snapchat had 200 million users in 2016 [ 5 ]. In the same year, Snapchat was the most popular SNS among 13–24 year-old adolescents and adults in the USA, with 72% of this group using them, followed by 68% Facebook users, and 66% Instagram users [ 15 ]. The popularity of Snapchat —particularly among young users—suggests the SNS landscape is changing in this particular demographic, with users being more aware of potential privacy risks, enjoying the lack of social pressure on Snapchat as well as the increased amount of control over who is viewing their ephemeral messages. However, it could also be the case that this may lead to the complete opposite by increasing the pressure to be online all the time because individuals risk missing the connecting thread in a continuing stream of messages within an online group. This may be especially the case in Snapchat groups/rooms created for adolescents in school or other contexts. This can lead to decreasing concentration during preparation tasks for school at home, and may lead to constant distraction because of the pressure to follow what is going on as well as the fear of missing out. From a business point of view, Snapchat has been particularly successful due to its novel impermanent approach to messaging, with Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg offering $3 billion to buy the SNS, which has been declined by Evan Spiegel, Snapchat’s CEO and co-founder [ 13 ]. These facts suggest the world of traditional SNS is changing.

Social networking can be instant messaging. The most popular messaging services to date are WhatsApp and Facebook Messenger with 1000 million active users each [ 5 ]. WhatsApp is a mobile messaging site that allows users to connect to one another via messages and calls using their internet connection and mobile data (rather than minutes and texts on their phones), and was bought by Facebook in 2014 for $22 billion [ 16 ], leading to controversies about Facebook’s data sharing practices (i.e., Whatsapp phone numbers being linked with Facebook profiles), resulting in the European Commission fining Facebook [ 17 ]. In addition to WhatsApp , Facebook owns their own messaging system, which is arguably the best example of the convergence between traditional SNS use and messaging, and which functions as an app on smartphones separate from the actual Facebook application.

Social networking can be microblogging. Microblogging is a form of more traditional blogging, which could be considered a personal online diary. Alternatively, microblogging can also be viewed as an amalgamation of blogging and messaging, in such a way that messages are short and intended to be shared with the writer’s audience (typically consisting of ‘followers’ rather than ‘friends’ found on Facebook and similar SNSs). A popular example of a microblogging site is Twitter , which allows 140 characters per Tweet only. In 2016, Twitter had 313 million active users [ 5 ], making it the most successful microblogging site to date. Twitter has become particularly used as political tool with examples including its important role in the Arab Spring anti-government protests [ 18 ], as well as extensive use by American President Donald Trump during and following his presidential campaign [ 19 ]. In addition to microblogging politics, research has also assessed the microblogging of health issues [ 20 ].

Social networking can be gaming. Gaming can arguably be considered an element of social networking if the gaming involves connecting with people (i.e., via playing together and communicating using game-inherent channels). It has been argued that large-scale internet-enabled games (i.e., Massively Multiplayer Role-Playing Games [MMORPGs]), such as the popular World of Warcraft , are inherently social games situated in enormous virtual worlds populated by thousands of gamers [ 21 , 22 ], providing gamers various channels of communication and interaction, and allowing for the building of relationships which may extend beyond the game worlds [ 23 ]. By their very nature, games such as MMORPGs are “particularly good at simultaneously tapping into what is typically formulated as game/not game, social/instrumental, real/virtual. And this mix is exactly what is evocative and hooks many people. The innovations they produce there are a result of MMOGs as vibrant sites of culture” [ 24 ]. Not only do these games offer the possibility of communication, but they provide a basis for strong bonds between individuals when they unite through shared activities and goals, and have been shown to facilitate and increase intimacy and relationship quality in couples [ 25 ] and online gamers [ 22 , 23 ]. In addition to inherently social MMORPGs, Facebook -enabled games—such as Farmville or Texas Hold “Em Poker ”—can be subsumed under the social networking umbrella if they are being used in order to connect with others (rather than for solitary gaming purposes) [ 26 , 27 ].

Social networking can be online dating. Presently, there are many online dating websites available, which offer their members the opportunity to become part of virtual communities, and they have been especially designed to meet the members’ romantic and relationship-related needs and desires [ 28 ]. On these sites, individuals are encouraged to create individual public profiles, to interact and communicate with other members with the shared interest of finding a ‘date’ and/or long-term relationships, therewith meeting the present authors’ definition of SNS. In that way, online dating sites can be considered social networking sites. However, these profiles are often semi-public, with access granted only to other members of these networks and/or subscribers to the said online dating services. According to the US think tank Pew Research Center’s Internet Project [ 29 ], 38% of singles in the USA have made use of online dating sites or mobile dating applications. Moreover, nearly 60% of internet users think that online dating is a good way to meet people, and the percentage of individuals who have met their romantic partners online has seen a two-fold increase over the last years [ 29 ]. These data suggest online dating is becoming increasingly popular, contributing to the appeal of online social networking sites for many users across the generations. However, it can also be argued that online dating sites such as Tinder may be less a medium for ‘long-term relationships’, given that Tinder use can lead to sexual engagement. This suggests the uses and gratifications perspective underlying Tinder use points more in the direction of other motives, such as physical and sexual aspirations and needs, rather than purely romance.

Taken together, this section has argued that social networking activities can comprise a wide variety of usage motivations and needs, ranging from friendly connection over gaming to romantic endeavors, further strengthening SNS’ natural embeddedness in many aspects of the everyday life of users. From a social networking addiction perspective, this may be similar to the literature on Internet addiction which often delineates between addictions to specific applications on the Internet (e.g., gaming, gambling, shopping, sex) and more generalized Internet addiction (e.g., concerning problematic over-use of the Internet comprising many different applications) [ 30 , 31 ].

2.3. Social Networking Is a Way of Being

In the present day and age, individuals have come to live increasingly mediated lives. Nowadays, social networking does not necessarily refer to what we do, but who we are and how we relate to one another. Social networking can arguably be considered a way of being and relating, and this is supported by empirical research. A younger generation of scholars has grown up in a world that has been reliant on technology as integral part of their lives, making it impossible to imagine life without being connected. This has been referred to as an ‘always on’ lifestyle: “It’s no longer about on or off really. It’s about living in a world where being networked to people and information wherever and whenever you need it is just assumed” [ 32 ]. This has two important implications. First, being ‘on’ has become the status quo. Second, there appears to be an inherent understanding or requirement in today’s technology-loving culture that one needs to engage in online social networking in order not to miss out, to stay up to date, and to connect. Boyd [ 32 ] herself refers to needing to go on a “digital sabbatical” in order not be on, to take a vacation from connecting, with the caveat that this means still engaging with social media, but deciding which messages to respond to.

In addition to this, teenagers particularly appear to have subscribed to the cultural norm of continual online networking. They create virtual spaces which serve their need to belong, as there appear to be increasingly limited options of analogous physical spaces due to parents’ safety concerns [ 33 ]. Being online is viewed as safer than roaming the streets and parents often assume using technology in the home is normal and healthy, as stated by a psychotherapist treating adolescents presenting with the problem of Internet addiction: “Use of digital media is the culture of the household and kids are growing up that way more and more” [ 34 ]. Interestingly, recent research has demonstrated that sharing information on social media increases life satisfaction and loneliness for younger adult users, whereas the opposite was true for older adult users [ 35 ], suggesting that social media use and social networking are used and perceived very differently across generations. This has implications for social networking addiction because the context of excessive social networking is critical in defining someone as an addict, and habitual use by teenagers might be pathologized using current screening instruments when in fact the activity—while excessive—does not result in significant detriment to the individual’s life [ 36 ].

SNS use is also driven by a number of other motivations. From a uses and gratifications perspective, these include information seeking (i.e., searching for specific information using SNS), identity formation (i.e., as a means of presenting oneself online, often more favorably than offline) [ 37 ], and entertainment (i.e., for the purpose of experiencing fun and pleasure) [ 38 ]. In addition to this, there are the motivations such as voyeurism [ 39 ] and cyberstalking [ 40 ] that could have potentially detrimental impacts on individuals’ health and wellbeing as well as their relationships.

It has also been claimed that social networking meets basic human needs as initially described in Maslow’s hierarchy of needs [ 41 ]. According to this theory, social networking meets the needs of safety, association, estimation, and self-realization [ 42 ]. Safety needs are met by social networking being customizable with regards to privacy, allowing the users to control who to share information with. Associative needs are fulfilled through the connecting function of SNSs, allowing users to ‘friend’ and ‘follow’ like-minded individuals. The need to estimate is met by users being able to ‘gather’ friends and ‘likes’, and compare oneself to others, and is therefore related to Maslow’s need of esteem. Finally, the need for self-realization, the highest attainable goal that only a small minority of individuals are able to achieve, can be reached by presenting oneself in a way one wants to present oneself, and by supporting ‘friends’ on those SNSs who require help. Accordingly, social networking taps into very fundamental human needs by offering the possibilities of social support and self-expression [ 42 ]. This may offer an explanation for the popularity of and relatively high engagement with SNSs in today’s society. However, the downside is that high engagement and being always ‘on’ or engaged with technology has been considered problematic and potentially addictive in the past [ 43 ], but if being ‘always on’ can be considered the status quo and most individuals are ‘on’ most of the time, where does this leave problematic use or addiction? The next section considers this question.

2.4. Individuals Can Become Addicted to Using Social Networking Sites

There is a growing scientific evidence base to suggest excessive SNS use may lead to symptoms traditionally associated with substance-related addictions [ 3 , 44 ]. These symptoms have been described as salience, mood modification, tolerance, withdrawal, relapse, and conflict with regards to behavioral addictions [ 45 ], and have been validated in the context of the Internet addiction components model [ 46 ]. For a small minority of individuals, their use of social networking sites may become the single most important activity that they engage in, leading to a preoccupation with SNS use (salience). The activities on these sites are then being used in order to induce mood alterations, pleasurable feelings or a numbing effect (mood modification). Increased amounts of time and energy are required to be put into engaging with SNS activities in order to achieve the same feelings and state of mind that occurred in the initial phases of usage (tolerance). When SNS use is discontinued, addicted individuals will experience negative psychological and sometimes physiological symptoms (withdrawal), often leading to a reinstatement of the problematic behavior (relapse). Problems arise as a consequence of the engagement in the problematic behavior, leading to intrapsychic (conflicts within the individual often including a subjective loss of control) and interpersonal conflicts (i.e., problems with the immediate social environment including relationship problems and work and/or education being compromised).

Whilst referring to an ‘addiction’ terminology in this paper, it needs to be noted that there is much controversy within the research field concerning both the possible overpathologising of everyday life [ 47 , 48 ] as well as the most appropriate term for the phenomenon. On the one hand, current behavioral addiction research tends to be correlational and confirmatory in nature and is often based on population studies rather than clinical samples in which psychological impairments are observed [ 47 ]. Additional methodological problems are outlined below ( Section 2.10 ). On the other hand, in the present paper, the present authors do not discriminate between the label addiction, compulsion, problematic SNS use, or other similar labels used because these terms are being used interchangeably by authors in the field. Nevertheless, when referring to ‘addiction’, the present authors refer to the presence of the above stated criteria, as these appear to hold across both substance-related as well as behavioral addictions [ 45 ] and indicate the requirement of significant impairment and distress on behalf of the individual experiencing it in order to qualify for using clinical terminology [ 49 ], such as the ‘addiction’ label.

The question then arises as what it is that individuals become addicted to. Is it the technology or is it more what the technology allows them to do? It has been argued previously [ 34 , 50 ] that the technology is but a medium or a tool that allows individuals to engage in particular behaviors, such as social networking and gaming, rather than being addictive per se . This view is supported by media scholars: “To an outsider, wanting to be always-on may seem pathological. All too often it’s labelled an addiction. The assumption is that we’re addicted to the technology. The technology doesn’t matter. It’s all about the people and information” [ 32 ]. Following this thinking, one could claim that it is not an addiction to the technology, but to connecting with people, and the good feelings that ‘likes’ and positive comments of appreciation can produce. Given that connection is the key function of social networking sites as indicated above, it appears that ‘social networking addiction’ may be considered an appropriate denomination of this potential mental health problem.

There are a numbers of models which offer explanations as to the development of SNS addiction [ 51 ]. According to the cognitive-behavioral model, excessive social networking is the consequence of maladaptive cognitions and is exacerbated through a number of external issues, resulting in addictive use. The social skill model suggests individuals use SNSs excessively as a consequence of low self-presentation skills and preference for online social interaction over face-to-face communication, resulting in addictive SNS use [ 51 ]. With respect to the socio-cognitive model, excessive social networking develops as a consequence of positive outcome expectations, Internet self-efficacy, and limited Internet self-regulation, leading to addictive SNS use [ 51 ]. It has furthermore been suggested that SNS use may become problematic when individuals use it in order to cope with everyday problems and stressors, including loneliness and depression [ 52 ]. Moreover, it has been contended that excessive SNS users find it difficult to communicate face-to-face, and social media use offers a variety of immediate rewards, such as self-efficacy and satisfaction, resulting in continued and increased use, with the consequence of exacerbating problems, including neglecting offline relationships, and problems in professional contexts. The resultant depressed moods are then dealt with by continued engagement in SNSs, leading to a vicious cycle of addiction [ 53 ]. Cross-cultural research including 10,930 adolescents from six European countries (Greece, Spain, Poland, the Netherlands, Romania, and Iceland) furthermore showed that using SNS for two or more hours a day was related to internalizing problems and decreased academic performance and activity [ 54 ]. In addition, a study using a sample of 920 secondary school students in China indicated neuroticism and extraversion predicted SNS addiction, clearly differentiating individuals who experience problems as a consequence of their excessive SNS use from those individuals who used games or the Internet in general excessively [ 55 ], further contributing to the contention that SNS addiction appears to be a behavioral problem separate from the more commonly researched gaming addiction. In a study using a relatively small representative sample of the Belgian population (n = 1000), results suggested 6.5% were using SNSs compulsively, with this group having lower scores on measures of emotional stability and agreeableness, conscientiousness, perceived control and self-esteem, and higher scores on loneliness and depressive feelings [ 56 ].

2.5. Facebook Addiction Is Only One Example of SNS Addiction

Over the past few years, research in the SNS addiction field has largely focused on a potential addiction to using Facebook specifically, rather than other SNSs (see e.g., [ 57 , 58 , 59 , 60 , 61 , 62 , 63 , 64 , 65 ]). However, recent research suggests individuals may develop addiction-related problems as a consequence of using other SNSs, such as Instagram [ 66 ]. It has been claimed that users may experience gratification through sharing photos on Instagram , similar to the gratification they experience when using Facebook , suggesting that the motivation to share photos can be explained by uses and gratifications theory [ 66 , 67 ]. This may also be the reason for why individuals have been found to be less likely to experience addiction-related symptoms when using Twitter in contrast to Instagram [ 66 ]. In addition to the gratification received through photo sharing, these websites also allow to explore new identities [ 68 ], which may be considered to contribute to gratification, as supported by previous research [ 69 ]. Research has also suggested that Instagram use in particular appears to be potentially addictive in young UK adults [ 66 ], offering further support for the contention that Facebook addiction is only one example of SNS addiction.

Other than the presence and possible addictive qualities of SNSs other than Facebook , it has been contended that the respective activities which take place on these websites need to be considered when studying addiction [ 70 ]. For instance, Facebook users can play games such as Farmville [ 36 ], gamble online [ 71 ], watch videos, share photos, update their profiles, and message their friends [ 3 ]. Other researchers have moved beyond the actual website use that is referred to in these types of addictions, and specifically focused on the main activities individuals engage in, referring to constructs such as ‘e-communication addiction’ [ 72 ]. It has also been claimed the term ‘ Facebook addiction’ is already obsolete as there are different types of SNSs that can be engaged in and different activities that can take place on these SNSs [ 70 ]. Following this justified criticism, researchers who had previously studied Facebook addiction specifically [ 58 ] have now turned to studying SNS addiction more generally instead [ 73 ], demonstrating the changing definitional parameters of social networking in this evolving field of research.

2.6. Fear of Missing Out (FOMO) May Be Part of SNS Addiction

Recent research [ 74 , 75 ] has suggested that high engagement in social networking is partially due to what has been named the ‘fear of missing out’ (FOMO). FOMO is “a pervasive apprehension that others might be having rewarding experiences from which one is absent” [ 76 ]. Higher levels of FOMO have been associated with greater engagement with Facebook , lower general mood, lower wellbeing, and lower life satisfaction, mixed feelings when using social media, as well as inappropriate and dangerous SNS use (i.e., in university lectures, and or whilst driving) [ 76 ]. In addition to this, research [ 77 ] suggests that FOMO predicts problematic SNS use and is associated with social media addiction [ 78 ], as measured with a scale adapted from the Internet Addiction Test [ 79 ]. It has been debated whether FOMO is a specific construct, or simply a component of relational insecurity, as observed for example with the attachment dimension of preoccupation with relationships in research into problematic Internet use [ 80 ].

In one study using 5280 social media users from several Spanish-speaking Latin-American countries [ 74 ] it was found that FOMO predicts negative consequences of maladaptive SNS use. In addition, this study also found that the relationship between psychopathology (as operationalized by anxiety and depression symptoms and assessed via the Hospital Anxiety and Depression Scale) and negative consequences of SNS use were mediated by FOMO, emphasizing the importance of FOMO in the self-perceived consequences of high SNS engagement. Moreover, other research [ 75 ] using 506 UK Facebook users has found that FOMO mediates the relationship between high SNS use and decreased self-esteem. Research with psychotherapists working with clients seeking help for their Internet use-related behaviors also suggested that young clients “fear the sort of relentlessness of on-going messaging (…). But concurrently with that is an absolute terror of exclusion” [ 34 ]. Taken together, these findings suggest FOMO may be a significant predictor or possible component of potential SNS addiction, a contention that requires further consideration in future research. Further work is needed into the origins of FOMO (both theoretically and empirically), as well as research into why do some SNS users are prone to FOMO and develop signs of addictions compared to those who do not.

2.7. Smartphone Addiction May Be Part of SNS Addiction

Over the last decade, research assessing problematic and possibly addictive mobile phone use (including smartphones) has proliferated [ 81 ], suggesting some individuals may develop addiction-related problems as a consequence of their mobile phone use. Recent research has suggested problematic mobile phone use is a multi-faceted condition, with dependent use being one of four possible pathways, in addition to dangerous, prohibited, and financially problematic use [ 82 ]. According to the pathway model, an addictive pattern of mobile phone use is characterized by the use of specific applications, including calls, instant messaging, and the use of social networks. This suggests that rather than being an addictive medium per se , mobile technologies including smartphones and tablets are media that enable the engagement in potentially addictive activities, including SNS use. Put another way, it could be argued that mobile phone addicts are no more addicted to their phones than alcoholics are addicted to bottles.

Similarly, it has been argued previously that individuals do not become addicted to the Internet per se , but to the activities they engage in on the Internet, such as gaming [ 50 ] or SNS use [ 3 ]. With the advent and ubiquity of mobile technologies, this supposition is more pertinent than ever. Using social networking sites is a particularly popular activity on smartphones, with around 80% of social media used via mobile technologies [ 83 ]. For instance, approximately 75% of Facebook users access the SNS via their mobile phones [ 84 ]. Therefore, it can be suggested that smartphone addiction may be part of SNS addiction. Previous research [ 73 ] supported this supposition by specifically indicating that social networking is often engaged in via phones, which may contribute to its addictive potential. Accordingly, it is necessary to move towards nosological precision, for the benefit of both individuals seeking help in professional settings, as well as research that will aid developing effective treatment approaches for those in need.

2.8. Nomophobia May Be Part of SNS Addiction

Related to both FOMO and mobile phone addiction is the construct of nomophobia. Nomophobia has been defined as “no mobile phone phobia”, i.e., the fear of being without one’s mobile phone [ 85 ]. Researchers have called for nomophobia to be included in the DSM-5, and the following criteria have been outlined to contribute to this problem constellation: regular and time-consuming use, feelings of anxiety when the phone is not available, “ringxiety” (i.e., repeatedly checking one’s phone for messages, sometimes leading to phantom ring tones), constant availability, preference for mobile communication over face to face communication, and financial problems as a consequence of use [ 85 ]. Nomophobia is inherently related to a fear of not being able to engage in social connections, and a preference for online social interaction (which is the key usage motivation for SNSs [ 3 ]), and has been linked to problematic Internet use and negative consequences of technology use [ 86 ], further pointing to a strong association between nomophobia and SNS addiction symptoms.

Using mobile phones is understood as leading to alterations in everyday life habits and perceptions of reality, which can be associated with negative outcomes, such as impaired social interactions, social isolation, as well as both somatic and mental health problems, including anxiety, depression, and stress [ 85 , 87 ]. Accordingly, nomophobia can lead to using the mobile phone in an impulsive way [ 85 ], and may thus be a contributing factor to SNS addiction as it can facilitate and enhance the repeated use of social networking sites, forming habits that may increase the general vulnerability for the experience of addiction-related symptoms as a consequence of problematic SNS use.

2.9. There Are Sociodemographic Differences in SNS Addiction

Research suggests there are sociodemographic differences among those addicted to social networking. In terms of gender, psychotherapists treating technology-use related addictions suggest SNS addiction may be more common in female rather than male patients, and describe this difference based on usage motivations:

(…) girls don’t play role-playing games primarily, but use social forums excessively, in order to experience social interaction with other girls and above all to feel understood in their very individual problem constellations, very different from boys, who want to experience narcissistic gratification via games. This means the girls want direct interaction. They want to feel understood. They want to be able to express themselves. (…) we’re getting girls with clinical pictures that are so pronounced that we have to admit them into inpatient treatment. (…) we have to develop strategies to specifically target girls much better because there appears a huge gap. Epidemiologically, they are a very important group, but we’re not getting them into consultation and treatment. [ 34 ]

This quote highlights two important findings. First, in the age group of 14–16 years, girls appear to show a higher prevalence of addictions to the Internet and SNSs, as found in a representative German sample [ 88 ], and second, teenage girls may be underrepresented in clinical samples. Moreover, another study on a representative sample demonstrated that the distribution of addiction criteria varies between genders and that extraversion is a personality trait differentiating between intensive and addictive use [ 89 ].

Cross-sectional research is less conclusive as regards the contribution of gender as a risk factor for SNS addiction. A higher prevalence of Facebook addiction was found in a sample of 423 females in Norway using the Facebook Addiction Scale [ 58 ]. Among Turkish teacher candidates, the trend was reversed, suggesting males were significantly more likely to be addicted to using Facebook [ 90 ] as assessed via an adapted version of Young’s Internet Addiction Test [ 79 ].

In other studies, no relationship between gender and addiction was found. For instance, using a version of Young’s Internet Addiction Test modified for SNS addiction in 277 young Chinese smartphone users, gender did not predict SNS addiction [ 91 ]. Similarly, another study assessing SNS dependence in 194 SNS users did not find a relationship between gender and SNS dependence [ 51 ]. In a study of 447 university students in Turkey, Facebook addiction was assessed using the Facebook Addiction Scale, but did not find a predictive relationship between gender and Facebook addiction [ 62 ].

Furthermore, the relationships between gender and SNS addiction may be further complicated by other variables. For instance, recent research by Oberst et al. [ 74 ] found that only for females, anxiety and depression symptoms significantly predicted negative consequences of SNS use. The researchers explained this difference by suggesting that anxiety and depression experience in girls may result in higher SNS usage, implicating cyclical relationships in that psychopathological symptom experience may exacerbate negative consequences due to SNS use, which may then negatively impact upon perceived anxiety and depression symptoms.

In terms of age, studies indicate that younger individuals may be more likely to develop problems as a consequence of their excessive engagement with online social networking sites [ 92 ]. Moreover, research suggests perceptions as to the extent of possible addiction appear to differ across generations. A recent study by [ 72 ] found that parents view their adolescents’ online communication as more addictive than the adolescents themselves perceive it to be. This suggests that younger generations significantly differ from older generations in how they use technology, what place it has in their lives, and how problematic they may experience their behaviors to be. It also suggests that external accounts (such as those from parents in the case of children and adolescents) may be useful for clinicians and researchers in assessing the extent of a possible problem as adolescents may not be aware of the potential negative consequences that may arise as a result of their excessive online communication use. Interestingly, research also found that mothers are more likely to view their adolescents’ behavior as potentially more addictive relative to fathers, whose perception tended to be that of online communication use being less of a problem [ 72 ]. Taken together, although there appear differences in SNS addiction with regards to sociodemographic characteristics of the samples studied, such as gender, future research is required in order to clearly indicate where these differences lie specifically, given that much of current research appears somewhat inconclusive.

2.10. There Are Methodological Problems with Research to Date

Given that the research field is relatively young, studies investigating social networking site addiction unsurprisingly suffer from a number of methodological problems. Currently, there are few estimations of the prevalence of social networking addiction with most studies comprising small and unrepresentative samples [ 3 ]. As far as the authors are aware, only one study (in Hungary) has used a nationally representative sample. The study by Bányai and colleagues [ 93 ] reported that 4.5% of 5961 adolescents (mean age 16 years old) were categorized as ‘at-risk’ of social networking addiction using the Bergen Social Media Addiction Scale. However, most studies investigating social networking addiction use various assessment tools, different diagnostic criteria as well as varying cut-off points, making generalizations and study cross-comparisons difficult [ 53 ].

Studies have made use of several different psychometric scales and six of these are briefly described below. The Addictive Tendencies Scale (ATS) [ 94 ] is based on addiction theory and uses three items, salience, loss of control, and withdrawal, whilst viewing SNS addiction as dimensional construct. The Bergen Facebook Addiction Scale (BFAS) [ 58 ] is based on Griffiths’ [ 45 ] addiction components, using a polythetic scoring method (scoring 3 out of 4 on each criterion on a minimum of four of the six criteria) and has been shown to have good psychometric properties. The Bergen Social Media Addiction Scale is similar to the BFAS in that ‘ Facebook ’ is replaced with ‘Social Media’ [ 95 ]. The E-Communication Addiction Scale [ 72 ] includes 22 questions with four subscales scored on a five-point Likert scale—addressing issues such as lack of self-control (cognitive), e-communication use in extraordinary places, worries, and control difficulty (behavioral)—and it has been found to have a high internal consistency, measuring e-communication addiction across different severity levels, ranging from very low to very high.

The Facebook Dependence Questionnaire (FDQ) [ 96 ] uses eight items based on the Internet Addiction Scale [ 97 ], with the endorsement of five out of eight criteria signifying addiction to using Facebook . The Social Networking Addiction Scale (SNWAS) [ 51 ] is a five-item scale which uses Charlton and Danforth’s engagement vs. addiction questionnaire [ 98 , 99 ] as a basis, viewing SNS addiction as a dimensional construct. This is by no means an exhaustive list, but those assessment tools highlighted here simply demonstrate that the current social networking addiction scales are based on different theoretical frameworks and use various cut-offs, and this precludes researchers from making cross-study comparisons, and severely limits the reliability of current SNS epidemiological addiction research.

Taken together, the use of different conceptualizations, assessment instruments, and cut-off points decreases the reliability of prevalence estimates because it hampers comparisons across studies, and it also questions the construct validity of SNS addiction. Accordingly, researchers are advised to develop appropriate criteria that are clinically sensitive to identify individuals who present with SNS addiction specifically, whilst clinicians will benefit from a reliable and valid diagnosis in terms of treatment development and delivery.

3. Discussion

In this paper, lessons learned from the recent empirical literature on social networking and addiction have been presented, following on from earlier work [ 3 ] when research investigating SNS addiction was in its infancy. The research presented suggests SNSs have become a way of being, with millions of people around the world regularly accessing SNSs using a variety of devices, including technologies on the go (i.e., tablets, smartphones), which appear to be particularly popular for using SNSs. The activity of social networking itself appears to be specifically eclectic and constantly changing, ranging from using traditional sites such as Facebook to more socially-based online gaming platforms and dating platforms, all allowing users to connect based on shared interests. Research has shown that there is a fine line between frequent non-problematic habitual use and problematic and possibly addictive use of SNSs, suggesting that users who experience symptoms and consequences traditionally associated with substance-related addictions (i.e., salience, mood modification, tolerance, withdrawal, relapse, and conflict) may be addicted to using SNSs. Research has also indicated that a fear of missing out (FOMO) may contribute to SNS addiction, because individuals who worry about being unable to connect to their networks may develop impulsive checking habits that over time may develop into an addiction. The same thing appears to hold true for mobile phone use and a fear of being without one’s mobile phone (i.e., nomophobia), which may be viewed as a medium that enables the engagement in SNSs (rather than being addictive per se ). Given that engaging in social networking is a key activity engaged in using mobile technologies, FOMO, nomophobia, and mobile phone addiction appear to be associated with SNS addiction, with possible implications for assessment and future research.

In addition to this, the lessons learned from current research suggest there are sociodemographic differences in SNS addiction. The lack of consistent findings regarding a relationship with gender may be due to different sampling techniques and various assessment instruments used, as well as the presence of extraneous variables that may contribute to the relationships found. All of these factors highlight possible methodological problems of current SNS addiction research (e.g., lack of cross-comparisons due to differences in sampling and classification, lack of control of confounding variables), which need to be addressed in future empirical research. In addition to this, research suggests younger generations may be more at risk for developing addictive symptoms as a consequence of their SNS use, whilst perceptions of SNS addiction appear to differ across generations. Younger individuals tend to view their SNS use as less problematic than their parents might, further contributing to the contention that SNS use has become a way of being and is contextual, which must be separated from the experience of actual psychopathological symptoms. The ultimate aim of research must be not to overpathologize everyday behaviors, but to carry out better quality research as this will help facilitate treatment efforts in order to provide support for those who may need it.

Based on the 10 lessons learned from recent SNS addiction research, the following recommendations are provided. First, researchers are recommended to consider including an assessment of FOMO and/or nomophobia in SNS addiction screening instruments because both constructs appear related to SNS addiction. Second, it is recommended that social networking site use is measured across different technologies with which it can be accessed, including mobile and smartphones. It is of fundamental importance to study what kinds of activities are being engaged in online (social networking, gaming, etc.), rather than the medium through which these activities are engaged in (i.e., desktop computer, tablet, mobile/smartphone). Third, risk factors associated with problematic social networking need to be assessed longitudinally to provide a clearer indication of developmental etiology, and to allow for the design of targeted prevention approaches. Fourth, clinical samples need to be included in research in order to ensure the sensitivity and specificity of the screening instruments developed. Fifth, in terms of treatment, unlike treating substance-related addictions, the main treatment goal should be control rather than abstinence. Arguably, abstinence cannot realistically be achieved in the context of SNS addiction because the Internet and social networking have become integral elements of our lives [ 3 , 8 , 33 ]. Rather than discontinuing social networking completely, therapy should focus on establishing controlled SNS use and media awareness [ 53 ].

4. Conclusions

This paper has outlined ten lessons learned from recent empirical literature on online social networking and addiction. Based on the presented evidence, the way forward in the emerging research field of social networking addiction requires the establishment of consensual nosological precision, so that both researchers and clinical practitioners can work together and establish productive communication between the involved parties that enable reliable and valid assessments of SNS addiction and associated behaviors (e.g., problematic mobile phone use), and the development of targeted and specific treatment approaches to ameliorate the negative consequences of such disorders.

Acknowledgments

This work did not receive any funding.

Author Contributions

The first author wrote the first complete draft of the paper based on an idea by the second author. The authors then worked collaboratively and iteratively on subsequent drafts of the paper.

Conflicts of Interest

The authors declare no conflict of interest.

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Social Networking Sites and Addiction: Ten Lessons Learned

1. Introduction

2. 10 Lessons Learned from Recent Empirical Literature