Social media addiction and emotions during the disaster recovery period—The moderating role of post-COVID timing

Abstract

Background Social media addiction, a recently emerged term in medical science, has attracted the attention of researchers because of its significant physical and psychological effects on its users. The issue has attracted more attention during the COVID era because negative emotions (e.g., anxiety and fear) generated from the COVID pandemic may have increased social media addiction. Therefore, the present study investigates the role of negative emotions and social media addiction (SMA) on health problems during and after the COVID lockdown. Methods A survey was conducted with 2926 participants aged between 25 and 45 years from all eight divisions of Bangladesh. The data collection period was between 2nd September– 13th October, 2020. Partial Least Square Structural Equation Modelling (PLS-SEM) was conducted for data analysis by controlling the respondents’ working time, leisure time, gender, education, and age. Results Our study showed that social media addiction and time spent on social media impact health. Interestingly, while anxiety about COVID increased social media addition, fear about COIVD reduced social media addition. Among all considered factors, long working hours contributed most to people’s health issues, and its impact on social media addiction and hours was much higher than negative emotions. Furthermore, females were less addicted to social media and faced less health challenges than males. Conclusion The impacts of negative emotions generated by the COVID disaster on social media addiction and health issues should be reconsidered. Government and employers control people’s working time, and stress should be a priority to solve people’s social media addiction-related issues.

The interplay of app characteristics and smartphone addiction in mobile shopping behaviour

“…Customers' urgency to use smartphones becomes especially important for their reassurance and performing tasks in their everyday lives (Rodríguez‐Torrico et al, 2020; Ruiz Mafé & Sanz Blas, 2006). Because of the individuals' need to stay connected, and the necessity for security and comfort, addictive behaviours with smartphones have shown a substantial intensification in the recent past (Chopdar et al, 2022; Nur‐A Yazdani et al, 2022; Parent & Shapka, 2020). Consistent with the extant literature, we affirm that smartphone addiction does impact m‐shopping intentions and frequency, meaning that users who are dependent on their smartphones due to their previous interaction with the mobile service or retailer, would have a higher intention to involve in m‐shopping and would purchase more frequently via mobile channels (Kang & Kurtzberg, 2019; Konok et al, 2016).…”

Antecedents of social media addiction in high and low relational mobility societies: Motivation to expand social network and fear of reputational damage

“…Social media addiction has various negative effects, including damaging mental health [ 5 ], poor life satisfaction [ 10 ], and chronic physical issues, such as neck pain or headaches [ 11 ]. Some studies that focused on company employees have demonstrated that social media addiction leads to a reduction in sleeping hours [ 12 ], increased distraction at workplace [ 12 ], and impaired productivity [ 8 ].…”