The Effects of Social Media Use on Adolescents’ Social Anxiety

Abstract

This research aims to describe the influence of the intensity of social media communication on the social anxiety of adolescents. This is ex-post facto research with the quantitative descriptive approach in which the data were taken from 52 respondents that were chosen by using simple random sampling technique. A questionnaire consisting of the intensity of social media communication and social anxiety were used to collect the data. The instrument for the independent variable was a scale of the social media use, and another scale of the social anxiety in which the content and reliability validity were previously analyzed by Cronbach’s Alpha coefficient. Simple linear regression analysis was used for the test of the influence. The results of this research show the significance of social media use on social anxiety with “quite strong” level of relation and the regression coefficient of -3.094. Additionally, in every increase of 1 point in the intensity of social media use will lower the social anxiety score by 3.094. With the significance of 0.115, the findings show that the independent variable does not influence the dependent variable. The significance of the constant number is 8.051, while social media use is 0.115, and the significance of each is sig 0.000 and sig 0.115, with P>0.05. The study suggests that both the dependent and independent variables are