ANTECEDENTS & CONSEQUENCES OF SOCIAL MEDIA ADICTION AMONG STUDENTS IN HIGHER EDUCATIONAL CONTEXT

Abstract

The objective of this research is to investigate how social media addiction mediates relationships between psychological distress and fear of missing out (FOMO) with subjective wellbeing and sleep quality, respectively. The present study also investigated the moderating effect of self-assertion upon association between social media addiction and both subjective wellbeing and sleep quality. This is the quantitative research. Data is collected with the help of structed questionnaire from 327 university’ students. Structural equation modeling was used to analyze the data and test the hypothesized relationships. The research focuses on students of education sector and may not be fully generalizable to other sectors. Additionally, future research could track changes over longer period and expand the geographical scope to include diverse industry settings. This research contributes to the body of knowledge as no previous research has examined mediating role of social media addiction for relationship of psychological distress & fear of missing out (FOMO) with subjective wellbeing and with sleep quality respectively. Current study also contributes in body of knowledge as no previous research has examined the moderating effect of self-assertion on the link between the social media addiction and subjective wellbeing as well as with sleep quality respectively.