Social Media Addiction and Sociopsychological Traits
This chapter discusses social media addiction from the perspective of sociopsychological traits. It elaborates on the social traits “need for affiliation” and “impression management” and the psychological traits “narcissism” and “leisure boredom” and thei
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Social Media Addiction and Sociopsychological Traits
This chapter discusses social media addiction from the perspective of sociopsychological traits. It elaborates on the social traits “need for affiliation” and “impression management” and the psychological traits “narcissism” and “leisure boredom” and their relationships with gratifications, level of social media use, and social media addiction. Further, it explores predictors of gratifications, level of social media use, social media addiction, and the corresponding addiction symptoms, as well as discriminating factors of social media addicts and nonaddicts. Implied by the findings, the chapter also examines the mediation effects of gratifications between sociopsychological traits and social media addiction.
5.1
Effects of Need for Affiliation
H3.1 hypothesized the stronger the need for affiliation of adolescents in urban China, the more they will find social media gratifying. Bivariate correlation results in Table 5.1 illustrate, as expected, that need for affiliation significantly and positively associated with seven social media gratifications, namely, friendship maintenance (r = .41, p < .001), social exchange (r = .27, p < .001), peer attention (r = .35, p < .001), free expression (r = .30, p < .001), information seeking (r = .30, p < .001), identity creation and management (r = .09, p < .01), and escape (r = .22, p < .001). These indicate that adolescents who have a stronger need for affiliation indeed find social media more gratifying. Thus, H3.1 was strongly supported. H3.2 proposed that the stronger the need for affiliation of adolescents in urban China, the more they will use social media. Results in Table 5.1 indicate that need for affiliation indeed had a significant and positive relationship with all four kinds of social medium use including IM (r = .14, p < .001), SNS (r = .12, p < .001), blogs (r = .12, p < .001), and microblogs (r = .11, p < .001). Thus, adolescents who have a stronger need for affiliation use social media more. Therefore, H3.2 was strongly supported. H. Huang, Social Media Generation in Urban China: A Study of Social Media Use and Addiction among Adolescents, Understanding China, DOI 10.1007/978-3-642-45441-7_5, © Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg 2014
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5 Social Media Addiction and Sociopsychological Traits
78 Table 5.1 Summary of the correlation results between need for affiliation and gratifications, level of social media use, and social media addiction
Need for affiliation Gratifications Friendship maintenance .41*** Social exchange .27*** Peer attention .35*** Free expression .30*** Information seeking .30*** Identity creation and management .09** Escape .22*** Social media use IM .14*** SNS .12*** Blogs .12*** Microblogs .11*** Social media addiction index .10*** Addiction symptoms Preoccupation .07* Adverse consequences .02 Alleviation of negative emotions .17*** Loss of interest in social activities −.06** Note: *p < .05; **p < .01; ***p < .001. N = 1,523–1,549
H3.3 hypothesized that the stronger the need for a
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