Extent of Facebook Addiction among College Students: Influence of Select Demographic Factors

Abstract

The current study is aimed at finding out the extent of Facebook addiction among graduate students in the Mysuru city. The sample consisted of 411(215 male and 196 female) students pursuing different courses aged between 17- 25 years, selected through simple random sampling. The students completed The Bergen Facebook Addiction Scale (2012), which measured addiction in six elements –salience, mood modification, tolerance, withdrawal, conflict and relapse. Chi square test was employed to find out the levels of addiction by various demographic factors and ‘t’ test was employed to find out the gender differences in the extent of Facebook addiction by male and female students on various elements. On the whole 9.7% of the sample studied was Facebook addicts, approximately 43% of the students selected in the present study had moderate to high Facebook addiction. Gender had significant influence over Facebook addiction; male students had higher addiction on Facebook than female students. Further analysis revealed that male students had higher addiction in only two of the elements of Facebook addiction-Tolerance and relapse than female students. Other factors- age, and course pursued did not have significant influence over sleep quality of the college students.