Influence of COVID-19 pandemic on social media addiction: Investigation among university students

The aim of the present study was to investigate the possible influence of COVID-19 pandemic related variables on social media addiction. The sample comprised 394 university students. Per-sonal Information Form, COVID-19 Information Form, COVID-19 Pandemic Burden Form, Difficulties in Emotion Regulation Scale-Brief Form, Bergen Social Media Addiction Scale, and Coronavirus Anxiety Scale were utilized to gather online data of voluntary participants. It was observed that social media usage increased among the majority of the participants (74.6%) dur-ing the COVID-19 pandemic. Moreover, social media addiction scores of the participants were associated with longer social media usage, lower GPA, being young and female in addition to emotion regulation difficulties, pandemic burden, and COVID-19 anxiety. These findings revealed that several factors which were caused by COVID-19 related global health crisis posed risk for social media addiction symptoms. When the possibilities which include this health crisis may not quit in the short term and similar problems may repeat in the future were taken into consideration, it was concluded that deeper examination of the roles of pandemic related factors such as COVID-19 anxiety and burden for social media and other addictions, would be required.