Smartphone and Social Media Use Contributed to Individual Tendencies Towards Social Media Addiction in Italian Adolescents During the COVID-19 Pandemic

Introduction: Adolescents in remote education during the COVID-19 pandemic had few opportunities to socialize in person, resulting in a significant rise in the use of social networks or instant messaging applications. However, excessive use may promote addictive tendencies towards these platforms, with negative consequences for adolescents' well-being.

Aims: In this study, we investigated the prevalence of smartphone and social media application use in early-to-late adolescents in remote education. We examined the relative impact of different social media applications on self-reported tendencies toward social media addiction.

Methods: The sample consisted of 765 Italian adolescents (Age: M = 14.11 ± 2.2; 401 females) who reported on use of the smartphone, social media applications, namely WhatsApp, Facebook, Twitter, TikTok, Instagram, Snapchat, Telegram, Messenger, and YouTube. Mean differences in social media addiction across group reporting different patterns of social media use were investigated. The contribution of each social media application in predicting social media addiction was determined using a random forest algorithm.

Results: On average, adolescents using just WhatsApp and YouTube reported the lowest social media addiction compared with peers also using Instagram or TikTok (or both of them). Overall, we found time spent on smartphone, and use of TikTok were the strongest predictors of social media addiction, followed by use of Facebook, Telegram, Messenger, and Twitter. Instagram, Snapchat, and WhatsApp use showed no effect when examined together with the other platforms.

Conclusions: Findings indicated that TikTok was the most addictive application during the COVID-19 pandemic, overshadowing other very popular applications with similar visual affordances.