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The present research is an attempt to study loneliness and sleep quality with reference to social media addiction and gender among adolescents. One hundred adolescents (50 Boys & 50 Girls) from two districts in Western Maharashtra participated in the present study. The participants received the Social Media Addiction Scale (SMAS), Perceived Loneliness Scale (PLS) and Pittsburgh Sleep Quality Index (PSQI). The 2 x 2 factorial designs were directed to assess the effect of social media addiction and gender on the loneliness and sleep quality of adolescents. Two-way ANOVA reveals that adolescents with high social media addiction significantly differ from their counterparts on the dimensions of loneliness and sleep quality. Significant gender difference and interaction effect was not found in the present study.
Keywords: social media addiction, loneliness, sleep quality, gender, and adolescents
Information technology has made massive changes in the communication system of individuals and society as well (Lucas et al., 2013). The most powerful and impactfill creation of information technology is social media which provides various platforms for expression of human mankind (Kapoor et al., 2017). From its inception, various social media platforms have played a vital role in social interaction. Today we can easily connect and communicate with each other.
Today's adolescents are born and brought up in the digital era. Hence they spent a good amount of time on screen. Various surveys consistently report extensive use of social media is increasing among young people and students than the general population (Kuss & Griffiths, 2011). According to some researchers, this rapid increase leads towards addiction among them (Griffiths & Pontes, 2014).
Social Media Addiction
Social media can be defined in various ways. According to Boyd and Ellison (2008), social media is a platform to create profiles, make explicit, and traverse relationships. For another researcher it is a set of information technology (Kapoor et al., 2017) social media sites, and internet-based applications built on Web 2.0 (Huang & Benyoucef, 2013) and web-based applications (Kietzmann et al., 2011).
Social networks allow us to connect not only with family, friends, and relatives but also with professionals and other unknown persons. Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter are some platforms that have become a prevalent form of communication worldwide (Michikyan & Saurez-Orozco, 2016). From general observation, it has...