Awareness of Social Media Addiction Among University Students and Its Association with Social Media Use Patterns

Abstract

Objective: This study aims to assess university students' awareness of social media addiction and explore the relationship between awareness levels and social media usage patterns.

Methods: A cross-sectional descriptive study was done to ascertain the awareness of university students regarding social media addiction, The study was conducted over a specific timeframe from October/ 10th/ 2023 to January/ 19th / 2025. The study utilized a questionnaire comprising of two sections: First to gather sociodemographic data of students consisting of 10 items; Second for the awareness of social media addiction developed by the researcher that consisting of 9 items. Reliability of the questionnaire for awareness of social media addiction (r = 0.856). Electronic convenient sampling was employed involving (450) students, the sample collected at university of Kerbala / colleges of medicine, nursing, pharmacy and dentistry and the exclusion criteria includes the students of Kerbala University who studies at other departments and students who study at other disciplines. The data were analyzed and interpreted through use of the application of statistical package for social sciences (SPSS), version 26.

 Results:  The results of the study demonstrate that students have moderate awareness about social media use addiction as reported by 56.7% of them (M±SD= 31.85±5.464) as well as there is a positive significant relationship between students’ awareness about social media addiction and daily hours use of social media at p-value= .046 .

Conclusion: students have moderate level of awareness about social media use addiction and the level of this awareness is affected by daily hours use of social media.