Integrating Technology Addiction and Use: An Empirical Investigation of Facebook Users

The purpose of this study was to conceptually replicate the model proposed by Turel, Serenko, and Giles (2011) in the new context of social networking websites. For this, the original instrument was adapted, data from 186 social networking website users were collected, and the model was analyzed by means of Partial Least Squares (PLS). The results supported the ideas advanced in the original study and show that addiction distorts user perceptions of usefulness and enjoyment attributed to the system, which in turn, influence behavioral usage intentions. In contrast to study 2 in the original paper, and in line with study 1 in the original paper, no relationship between addiction and perceived ease of use was observed. Comparing central tendencies across studies, it seems that users of social networking websites are more likely to exhibit technology addiction symptoms than users of online auction websites. The results ultimately imply that context matters in technology addiction research since it can alter some aspects of the measurement model, nomological network, and construct means.