Does Anxiety Influence Instagram Addiction among College Students?

Abstract

This study attempted to find out the relationship between anxiety and Instagram addiction of students pursuing pre university and degree courses. The sample consisted of 131 students comprising of students aged between 14-23 years. The students completed Test for Instagram addiction (TIA) developed by D’Souza, Samyukta and Bivera (2018) and anxiety measurement from DASS (Lovibond & Lovibond, 1995). Test for Instagram addiction measured addiction in 6factors–Lack of control, Disengagement, Escapism, Health and interpersonal troubles, Excessive use and Obsession. Through DASS, the authors measured anxiety scores. Pearson’s product moment correlations were employed to find out the relationship between factors of Instagram addiction and anxiety. Simple linear regression was employed to find out the slopes of various components of Instagram addiction to anxiety. Results revealed that as the anxiety scores increased addiction to Instagram in components lack of control, disengagement, health and interpersonal troubles and obsession increased and in total scores, also increased linearly and significantly. Increased anxiety lead to lack of control over usage of Instagram, health and interpersonal troubles, and disengagement for the college students.