Interrelationship between Attachment Styles and Facebook Addiction

Abstract

Social networking sites have started to become one of the most frequently used online communication types in the world. It is reported that one of the commonly used social networking sites is Facebook. Since Facebook use is new yet, it can be stated that researches on the Facebook addiction are at the beginning level. For this reason, determining factors leading to the Facebook addiction has gained importance. In this context, in this study, relationships between attachment styles and the Facebook addiction were examined. The participants of the study were 322 university students [145 (45%) male, 177 (55%) female, M age =20.61 years, SD=1.82]. In the study, the Personal Information Form, the Relationship Scales Questionnaire and the Facebook Addiction Scale were administered. The relationships between attachment styles and the Facebook addiction were calculated via using the Pearson correlation analysis. The Pearson correlation analysis results indicated that the Facebook addiction was negatively related with the secure and dismissing attachment style and positively related with the preoccupied attachment style. No relationship was found between the fearful attachment style and the Facebook addiction. If the attachment styles predicted the Facebook addiction was examined via using the stepwise regression analysis. The research findings indicated that the secure and dismissing attachment style negatively predicted and the preoccupied attachment style positively predicted the Facebook addiction. However, it was determined that the fearful attachment style did not predict Facebook addiction. The research findings were discussed under the light of related literature.

Addiction to Social Media and Attachment Styles: A Systematic Literature Review

“…Authors have reported that secure attachment orientation negatively predicts social media addiction (Monacis et al 2017a), and internet addiction (Eichenberg et al 2017;Monacis et al 2017a). This is in line with the negative association found between secure attachment, Facebook time, and Facebook addiction (Bashir et al 2017;Eroglu 2015;Rao and Madan 2012). Moreover, it has been assumed that stronger parental attachment is related to lesser need to use the internet (Yang et al 2016) for the purpose to escape (Soh et al 2014), and studies have concluded that it may be considered a protector factor (Eichenberg et al 2017;Savcı and Aysan 2016;Mazaheri Nejadfard and Hosseinsabet 2017;Kozan et al 2016).…”

“…Attachment avoidance has been reported to have no significant relationship with Facebook attachment (Oldmeadow et al 2013;Andangsari et al 2013) and Facebook addiction (Eroglu 2015;Lin 2016). Furthermore, participants high in attachment avoidance have been found to be less likely to be happy about their Facebook profile (Oldmeadow et al 2013).…”

“…Being anxiously attached was associated with decreased perceived interpersonal competency. Such individuals were therefore more likely to initiate online relationships, which may explain their high use of Facebook (Jenkins-Guarnieri et al 2012) and addiction to it (Eroglu 2015). Yaakobi and Goldenberg (2014) reported a high positive relationship between that attachment style and the amount of time spent in bonding in such systems.…”

Math anxiety: the impact on traditionally underserved and marginalized adult female undergraduate students in elementary statistics

“…The exponential growth of social media, an outcome of a 21 st Century technological explosion, provides easy access to communications, socialization, and self-fulfillment (Eroglu, 2015). Facebook, the most commonly used social media site across the globe, is now recognized by researchers as an addictive behavior amongst female higher education students, with individuals experiencing withdrawal symptoms when they attempt to reduce the amount of hours spent in the application (Eroglu, 2015;Thompson, & Lougheed, 2012).…”

“…Maintaining these online friendships becomes a critical function of everyday life, as students find self-fulfillment in seeking like-minded individuals to share and validate personal ideas and beliefs ( Eroglu, 2015;Thompson et al, 2012). For example, within Facebook, an "I hate Math" group was created to promote math failure as a socially acceptable outcome since "likes" on the page demonstrated that math failure is experienced by many people, and through a "communal camaraderie" (Aydin, 2012(Aydin, , p. 1097, it provide credibility to unsuccessful outcomes (Whyte & Anthony, 2012).…”