Correlation between social media addiction and social media bullying: A cross sectional analytic study in Indonesian Youth

Abstract

BackgroundSocial media had eased communication among people in the last twenty years. However, the ease of being constantly connected also lead to problems, including social media addiction and social media bullying. Association between these two problems has not been researched extensively in Indonesia. Indonesia is the fourth most populous country in the world and said to be the most social media-addicted nation. Approximately 50% of the population is categorized as Youth Generation (Generation Y and Z) who consider social media as a necessity in their daily lives. We conducted this nation-wide study to examine the correlation between social media addiction and the experience of being bullied in a social media platform in Indonesian youth.MethodsAn observational analytic study with a cross sectional design was conducted with a total of 1403 respondents. The samples were collected via consecutive sampling on Instagram. To determine social media addiction, the standard Social Media Disorder (SMD) Scale was used and the experience of being bullied is evaluated using a self-made questionnaire. Chi-square and Coefficient contingency analysis is used to determine the correlation.ResultsAlmost half of the respondents (n = 671, 47.9%) are classified as addicted to social media. More than half of the respondents claimed to have experienced bullying when interacting with people via social media (n = 923, 66%). Analyzing the two nominal independent variables results in a weak yet significant correlation (r = 0.097, p = 0.032).ConclusionThere is a significant correlation between social media addiction and the experience of being bullied in a social media platform in Indonesian youth. Future research are needed to help government prevents social media addiction that proved has correlation with bullying.

Distance Learning during the COVID-19 Pandemic. A Comparison between European Countries

“…Although the research on attention span and DL is still under examination [56][57][58], it has been reported that multitasking (here defined as the ability to surf the internet and social media while in DL) has a direct effect on attention span [59] and can contribute to diminishing students' experience. The use of social media during DL requires further investigation, as uncontrolled usage of social apps can indeed produce the phenomenon of addiction, a decrement in social skills, and mental health disorders [60][61][62][63]. Education on device usage and netiquette [64] should be transversal and should include adolescents, teachers, and tutors.…”