Social Media Addiction, Personality Factors and Fear of Negative Evaluation in a Sample of Young Adults

Abstract

Despite growing attention paid to exploring the benefits as well as negative consequences of social media use, we know less about the background variables involved in social media addiction. Therefore, the aim of this study was to investigate several potential contributors to addiction to social media, namely, self-esteem, fear of negative evaluation, sensation seeking and five personality variables. The participants of the online survey were Hungarian university students (N = 250, aged between 18 and 35 years; 59.2% female). Females scored higher on the social media addiction scale [t(248) = −2.42, p < 0.05]. The findings showed that (a) fear of negative evaluation positively predicted social media addiction (β = 0.28, p < 0.001) and (b) self-esteem (β = −0.23, p < 0.01) and conscientiousness (β = −0.14, p < 0.05) negatively predicted social media addiction in this sample of young adults. Additionally, social media addiction was negatively correlated with emotional stability [r (250) = −0.38, p < 0.001] and positively with extraversion; however, these variables were not significant predictors in the multivariate analysis. These findings suggest that young people should learn how to carefully use the Internet and social media settings, e.g., courses on addiction to digital devices should be accessible to all university students.