The relationship between self-esteem and attitude towards social media addiction among undergraduate students

Abstract

The continuous development of technologies and applications of social media are more likely to be related with the issue of addiction to social media. The addiction level towards social media is potentially co-relate based on the university student’s self-esteem and attitude. This study aimed to examine the relationship between self-esteem and attitude towards social media addiction among undergraduate students. This study adopted the method of primary quantitative whereby it is a combination process of survey research and correlational research design. A total of 370 respondents from the Faculty of Science, Faculty of Engineering and Faculty of Social Science and Humanities in UTM, Skudai Johor participated in this survey. The instrument of Rosenberg Self-Esteem Scale (RSES) (Rosenberg,1965), Measure Online Communication Attitude (MOCA) (Ledbetter, 2009) and Social Media Addiction Scale (SMAS) (Tutgun-Ünal & Deniz, 2015) were adopted to measure the variable of self-esteem, attitude and social media addiction. Data were analysed descriptively and inferentially using Median, Spearman Correlation and Multiple Regression. The results of descriptive analysis for self-esteem towards social media usage shows that undergraduates possess a moderate level of self-esteem in using social media. The results of descriptive analysis for attitude towards social media usage shows that undergraduates possess a moderate level of attitude in using social media. The results of inferential analysis which was conducted using Spearman Correlation indicates that there is a significant correlation between the variable of self-esteem and social media addiction and attitude and social media addiction. The independent variable of self-esteem was the main contributors in prediction the dependent variable of social media addiction. In conclusion, the results of this study explained that the correlation exists between these variables were weak. Hence, a part from self-esteem and attitude, there are other external factors also which might contribute in social media addiction among undergraduates.