Individual-, interpersonal-, and family/household- level predictors of a measure of social media addiction in Chinese undergraduate students

Background : There is mounting evidence that some social media users develop unhelpful / problematic patterns of engagement. Whether or not the term ‘addiction’ is best suited to describe such is debated. Nonetheless, given the near ubiquity of social media use, it is crucial that risk factors and protective factors for problematic use are identified. Method: To this end we explored associations between a measure of social media addiction and a range of individual-, interpersonal-, and family/household- level variables in a large (6000+), cross-sectional sample of Chinese undergraduate students. Results: The findings indicate that the measure of social media addiction correlated positively with being young and female, as well as self-reported levels of stress, and correlated negatively with psychological resilience, quality of relationship with parents, parental education and household income. Interestingly, happiness showed a complex relationship, flipping in sign depending on the model run. Conclusions: The findings are contextualized within the existing research. Whilst cross-sectional in design, the study highlights potential areas for further investigation, particularly with respect to underlying directions of causality, which may eventually lead to the development of resources and interventions to address problematic patterns of social media use.