ABSTRACT
BACKGROUND: Social media addiction (SMA), a behavioral addiction characterized by compulsive engagement in social media platforms that significantly disrupts the users' functioning in important life domains, is fast becoming a major global public health problem. Emerging data paints a gory picture of the devastating mental health and psychosocial consequences of SMA among adolescents, undergraduate students, and young adults. Social media addiction can have long lasting physical and psychological effects, substantially impairing an individual’s ability to function at work or school or cope with daily life
OBJECTIVE: This study therefore seeks to assess the knowledge, attitude, prevalence and determinants of SMA among undergraduate students of the University of Benin in Nigeria.
METHODS: This is a cross-sectional survey conducted among 540 randomly selected undergraduate students of the University of Benin. Social media addiction was assessed using the 18-item version of the Bergen Social Media Addiction Scale (BSMAS) while psychosocial determinants of SMA were evaluated using the General Health Questionnaire (GHQ-28) Questionnaire. Data was analyzed with IBM SPSS version 22.0. Chi-square and Fisher’s exact tests were utilized to determine the association between socio-demographic characteristics and SMA and its correlates while binary logistic regression models were used to determine the significant determinants of SMA and its correlates among the undergraduate students. P-values < 0.05 were statistically significant.
RESULTS: The ages of the respondents ranged from 16-30 years with a mean of 21.1±2.4 years; 324 (60.0%) were males. A significant majority of the respondents (508[94.1%]) had good knowledge of SMA overall as well as strong performance across various domains of knowledge of social media addiction. Four hundred and ninety-nine (92.4%) respondents had positive attitude towards SMA while 290 (53.7%) exhibited mental distress. One hundred and forty-six (27.0%) respondents had severe SMA while 271 (50.2%) respondents had moderate SMA. Several socio-demographic and other variables were significantly associated with prevalence of social media addiction. In the multiple logistic regression model, five variables including respondents’ sex (OR = 0.501 [95% Cl = 0.301 – 0.837, p = 0.008]), family structure (OR = 0.294 [95% Cl = 0.139 – 0.623, p = 0.001]), knowledge of SMA (OR = 0.083 [95% Cl = 0.008 – 0.812, p = 0.032]), duration of daily use of social media networks (OR = 5.549 [95% Cl = 3.354 – 9.179, p = <0.001]), and GHQ-28 score (OR = 0.238 [95% Cl = 0.136 – 0.408, p = <0.001]) were statistically significant predictors of duration of moderate/severe SMA.
CONCLUSION: A significant proportion of undergraduate students at the University of Benin had SMA. While majority of them had good knowledge and positive attitude towards SMA, over two-third of them spent ≥5 hours daily on social media networks. Being female, being from a monogamous family structure, staying off campus and spending ≥5 hours daily on social media networks were significant determinants of SMA. Efforts should be made by all concerned to address the rising trend of SMA among undergraduate students.
KEY WORDS: Undergraduate students, Social Media Addiction, University of Benin
