Whether it’s scrolling through Instagram or constantly refreshing your Facebook feed, social media can eat up hours of your day. But if you find it particularly hard to stay away from social media, your personality may be partly to blame.
According to a new study, people with certain personality traits are more likely to develop a social media addiction.
“There has been plenty of research on how the interaction of certain personality traits affects addiction to things like alcohol and drugs,” study co-author Isaac Vaghefi, an assistant professor of information systems at Binghamton University in New York state, said in a statement[1]. But relatively few studies have looked at how personality traits may affect tech addiction, including addiction to social media, the researchers said. [7 Signs Your Child Is an iPad Addict[2]]
In the new study, the researchers surveyed about 300 college students to assess their personality and gauge their level of addiction to the social media[3] site each individual used most frequently. (Questions to measure social media addiction included: “I sometimes neglect important things because of my interest in this social networking website”; “When I am not using this social networking website, I often feel agitated”; and “I have made unsuccessful attempts to reduce the time I interact with this social networking website.”)
The study found that three personality traits in particular — neuroticism[4], conscientiousness and agreeableness — were related to social media addiction. Two other personality traits, extraversion and openness to experience, weren’t linked with social media addiction.
Specifically, the researchers found that people with high levels of neuroticism, or the tendency to experience negative emotions such as stress and anxiety, were more likely to develop addiction to social media[5], compared with people who had low levels of