Social Media Addiction and Associated Factors among Madda Walabu University Students, Southeast Ethiopia

Social media is a relatively new technology, and little studies have been conducted on its addiction and associated factors. It has become popular among college and university students of young population. Social media is addictive specially using it for chatting is very attractive and addictive. Once you sign in to this public site, you may follow others’ comments, gossip, and get in touch with the whole society or world. You can’t stop when you want since you are controlled. The present study is designed to evaluate social media addiction and associated factors among university students. An institutional based cross-sectional study was conducted from April 11 - 30 /2017. A simple random sampling method was conducted to recruit the study participants. Data was collected by using pre-tasted, structured and self-administered questioner and analyzed using SPSS version 20 statistical software. A total of 149(99.3%) of respondents were reported as social media users. From this figure the majority 104(69.8%) of participants used Facebook. From the total users about 32(21.3%) of students were addicted. Variables such as being male, young in age (18-22 years), and excessive use of social media per day significantly associated with higher odds of addiction. Therefore, students should limit and use appropriately the social media through self-regulation.