The Prevalence of Addiction to Social Networking Sites and Its Impact on Well-Being among Students of Addis Ababa University, Ethiopia

doi:10.7176/nmmc/95-01

Abstract

The emergence of Social Networking Sites (SNS) has been changing many aspects of the students’ daily activities positively. But, inappropriate use of social networking sites may have negative effects like Social Networking Sites Addiction (SNSA) and disturbance of psychological and social well-being. The purpose of this study was to assess the prevalence of SNSA and its impact on well-being among Addis Ababa University, Main Campus students. A cross-sectional research design was employed to collect and analyse data for the study. Simple random sampling technique was used to select participants from the colleges. Two hundred nineteen (290) samples (141 males and 132 females) were selected from the total 1,143 3rd year students in the Campus. A standardized and pilot tested questionnaire was used to collect the data. Descriptive statistics such as percentage and frequency, independent samples t-test, ANOVA, Pearson’s Product-Moment correlation coefficient and linear regression were employed to analyse the data. The finding revealed that majority of the respondents was at the age of 21 - 25. All of the participants included in the analysis were a member of at least one SNS and most of them access SNS several times per day. According to the findings, 3.3% of participants were severely addicted to SNS and there is no gender difference in SNSA. The findings also showed that there was a statistically significant negative correlation between SNSA and both Psychological and Social Well-being. Moreover, recommendations were drawn based on the findings of the study. Keywords: Addiction , Prevalence, Social Networking Sites, Well-being DOI: 10.7176/NMMC/95-01 Publication date: January 31 st 2021

Highlights

The beginning of social networking sites (SNS) goes back to late 19th century
Inferential statistics were applied to test age, department, frequency of accessing and average time spent on social networking site differences in Addiction among participants by making comparison of Post-hoc Tukey’s test
This study investigated the prevalence of Social Networking Sites Addiction (SNSA) and whether it affected psychological and social well-being of the students negatively or positively

Summary

Introduction

The beginning of social networking sites (SNS) goes back to late 19th century. During this period, many scholars tried to invent different SNS at different time. The numbers of users of these popular SNS and the time spent on them by the users have been increasing. Researchers argue that increased time spent on SNS lead the users to Social Networking Sites Addiction (SNSA) and which in turn affects the well-being of the users (Andreassen & Pallesen, 2014; Andreassen, 2015). The first SNS, SixDegrees developed as a result of the idea that people were linked via six degrees of separation (Boyd and Ellison, 2008; Milgram, 1967). The site became highly popular and got recognized by the media in early 2003 (Boyd & Ellison, 2007). A large membership flew as a result of the media coverage overwhelmed the site and at last, the site’s fame weakened

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