Trait Boredom and Perceived Social Media Addiction Relationship

Abstract

This is the first study that examined self-perceived social media addiction, trait boredom, phubbing frequency, and age(year) at the same time. The current study not only explored the relationship between trait boredom and perceived social media addiction, but it further looked into the relationship between trait boredom and phubbing utilizing the same measure of boredom, followed by a mediation model. Moreover, the current study examined whether differences in social media use also exists in smaller age ranges rather than just generational differences. The participants were university students from a Gulf country, specifically Kuwait. Initially a factor analysis was run on the Boredom Proneness Scale to determine the significant factors due do the variation in the number of factors found and because it was implemented in a new population. The significant factors were then added as predictor variables into the regression equation. When phubbing was examined around 40% of the students fell into the sometimes-phubbing category. Around 30% of the students fell into either often or all the time phubbing categories. The independent variables of the model accounted for 17% of the variance in the dependent variable. The internal stimulation alone explained 7% of the variance in perceived social media addiction. The addition of phubbing increased the variance explained by another 10%. However, age was found to be insignificant as a predictor. Phubbing was then used as a mediator between boredom and perceived social media addiction. However, it was not found to be significant.