Factors of social media addiction among computer students in higher education

Social media is perceived as a medium of communication and a source of information. Social media has become popular among adolescents, particularly since it is simple to use and information can be rapidly disseminated. Accordingly, the excessive amount of time spent on social media eventually drives an addiction to social media, known as social media addiction. Previous studies have researched social media addiction. However, a lack of study focuses on computer students. Therefore, this study aims to investigate factors of social media addiction among computer students in higher education. The research design used in this study is a cross-sectional survey, and the sample data is 225 computer students. The sampling was selected using a purposive sampling technique. The instrument in this study were adopted from Griffith (2005) and validated by three experts. Descriptive statistics have been conducted to identify the students_ demographic on social media addiction among computer students. Next, to investigate the dominance of social media addiction among computer students, the Confirmatory Factor Analysis (CFA) and Pooled- CFA (Pooled-CFA) has been conducted. The findings have revealed the good fitness indexes (RMSEA: .087; CFI: .931; IFI: .931; TLI: .918; NFI: .894; ChiSq/df: 2.677) for a one-factor model of social media addiction with salience, tolerance, mood modification, conflict, withdrawal and relapse. Then, the pooled-CFA has been conducted to investigate the relationship between social media addiction with salience, mood modification, tolerance, withdrawal, conflict, and relapse among computer students also revealed good fitness indexes (RMSEA: .070; CFI: .958; IFI: .959; TLI: .947; NFI: .923; ChiSq/df: 2.087). Accordingly, this study has filled the gaps in social media addiction among computer students. This study is expected to positively impact computer students, lecturers, universities, and the Ministry of Higher Education (MoHE) in measuring the addiction level to social media.