Love it or hate it, but can you ignore social media? - A bibliometric analysis of social media addiction

Abstract

The study does a thorough bibliometric analysis of the subject through time to analyze the research landscape of social media addiction (SMA). The study concentrated on the scientific publications' topic, research trends, and scholarly production in social media addiction. From the Scopus database, the authors retrieved 712 peer-reviewed papers. The bibliometric technique thoroughly analyzed the trend, thematic focus, and scientific output in social media addiction. The analysis propounds that significant work in the field of social media addiction kickstarted in 2010. The most pertinent publications for articles about social media addictions are “International Journal of Environment Research and Public Health,” “Journal of Behavioural Addiction” and “Computers and Human behavior.” Griffith et al. (2016) work is the most cited of the examined materials. And amongst the nations, the United States has contributed the most to social media addiction research and has the most extensive number of scientific papers. The results also listed the discipline's most influential academic institutions and well-known researchers. The popular accompanying fields of analysis as revealed by the word map of the keywords, include "internet addiction”, “behavioural addiction”, “Facebook addiction”, “anxiety, and “depression”. Thematic analysis suggests that researchers in this field may explore Narcissism, Psychopaths, and Machiavellianism, to provide a better perspective on social media addiction. Also, emerging themes like “Depressive symptoms, Emotional Regulation, and Social Networking Sites (SNS) Addiction” appear to be the new dimensions of social media addiction. The Bibliometric analysis helps the present study make a valuable contribution to the area by helping to provide the direction of the existing work and the future orientation required. These findings aim to aid researchers, particularly those who are just starting in the subject of social media addiction, in deciding what areas of the field to focus on for their research; what methodology has been used and most cited; where to get the work published; which dimensions to explore, and with whom to collaborate.