Friendship Quality as a Predictor of Addiction to Social Networking Sites among University Students

Abstract

This study aimed to identifying the extent to which the quality of friendship contributes to addiction to social networking sites among Jordanian university students. The study sample consisted of (629) male and female students at the bachelor’s level. The study fillowed the predictive descriptive methodology. Data were collected online using two measurement tools to measure the quality of friendship and addiction to social. Networking sites. The results indicated that there were statistically significant differences in the mean scores of males and females on the social media addiction scale, in favor of males, and on the quality of friendship, in favor of females. The results showed that two dimension of the friendship quality scale predict addiction to social networking sites among males. These two dimensions are trustworthy alliance and familiarity. While none of the dimensions of this scale were predicted for females, Anumber of recommendations were presented such as: the necessityof a role for the family in guiding children to choose the ideal type of friend, and the necessity of strengthening self-monitoring for future research.