Factors influencing facebook addiction among Varendra University students in the lockdown during the COVID-19 outbreak

Abstract

Usage of the Internet has grown exponentially in the last two decades. Among the most likely to benefit from this are social networking sites (SNSs), which have become a staple of our day-to-day communication and recreation. The largest of these is Facebook, which was launched in 2004. Facebook has become a global behemoth, with billions of devoted users who often spend many hours on the service daily. As such, it has been suggested that Facebook addiction (FA) is a probable behavioral addiction. Despite being a flourishing research area, research on FA among university students in Bangladesh has been limited. The primary aim of this study was to determine the predictors of FA among university students and to find an association among socio-demographic, behavioral, and Facebook activity variables. This study was conducted between July 2020 and January 2021 and involved 326 participants from 11 departments in different faculties of Varendra University, Rajshahi. Firstly, the study focused on FA, and then we checked the participants’ Facebook addiction level (FAL). The risk factors were predicted to be gender, family status, amount of daily sleep, weekly study hours, parents’ monitoring, age, level of education, faculty, results of prior exams, marital status, number of male and female Facebook friends, etc. Future studies should include repeated observations of the same variables over short or long durations to identify FA-relevant factors among university students in Bangladesh.