What’s Feeding Your Monster? A Look at Narcissistic Tendency and Low Self-Esteem as Driving Forces behind the Growth of Social Media Dependency

Abstract

In current times social media is considered a necessity and it is often normal for people to be dependent on them. With the arrival of these platforms, it has created an opportunity for people to express themselves in a way that they could not otherwise. However this has also led to an addiction in some people and has proved to be disruptive of daily life activities. But the expression of this addiction to social media is not similar in all cases. The differences in behavioral and personality patterns manifest themselves as social media addiction. This may be rooted in narcissistic tendency as a way of portraying themselves as superior to their peers and a need to feed their ego; or low self esteem as a way of seeking approval and a need to boost their self-image. To test this hypothesis and to estimate the correlation between the three factors of social media addiction, narcissistic tendency and low self esteem we used the following questionnaires – Bergen Social Media Addiction Scale, Narcissistic Personality Inventory-16 and the Rosenberg Self-Esteem scale. The questionnaires were administered to 290 persons (104 males and 186 females) in the age group of 15 – 50 years. It was found that both males and females exhibited social media addiction with females having a higher tendency to be narcissistic and lower self esteem.