Psychological predictors of addictive social networking sites use: The case of Serbia

Abstract

The popularity of social networking sites (SNS) changed to a great extent not only media environment, but also everyday life activities of modern humans. Despite their obvious benefits in terms of communication, there is evidence of addictive tendencies in SNS use. The study examined psychological and socio-demographic predictors of these addictive tendencies in Serbian SNS users drawn from a representative sample (N = 2014), having in mind that Serbia has Facebook penetration rate over European average. Results indicate a low incidence of self-reported addictive tendencies, with some individual differences worth addressing. We developed and tested exhaustive model that included three sets of predictors (socio-demographic, psychological and exposure to traditional media), as well as restrictive models that systematically excluded group by group. Path analysis revealed that psychological traits were stronger predictors than socio-demographic ones: people with lower self-esteem, lower general self-efficacy and higher introversion were more likely to report addictive SNS use. Although our results in general support the so called "social compensation hypothesis", it can be due to the focus on addictive tendencies instead of other indicators of SNS use.