A longitudinal study on the reciprocal relationship between narcissism and social Networking Sites addiction

Abstract

We aimed to examine the link between various forms of narcissism and SNS addiction in a longitudinal design. We conducted a two-wave longitudinal survey among 339 SNS users with an eight-month lag between the waves. We sought to determine whether narcissism predicts changes in SNS addiction and vice versa. We found that almost all narcissism forms were positively related to SNS addiction. We also found lagged, longitudinal links for heroism, admiration, and rivalry, while for enmity and isolation, those were limited to the same measurement. This suggests that the self-protection motive is essential in understanding the co-occurrence of narcissism and SNS addiction, and the self-enhancement motive might be important in understanding the dynamics of within-person fluctuations of SNS addiction.