Διερεύνηση της επίδρασης της προβληματικής χρήσης των μέσων κοινωνικής δικτύωσης στην ποιότητα ζωής των χρηστών τους
Investigating the impact of problematic social media usage on the quality of life of its users
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Keywords
Ποιότητα ζωής ; Μέσα Κοινωνικής Δικτύωσης (ΜΚΔ) ; Social media ; Προβληματική χρήση ; WHOQoL-BREF ; BSMASAbstract
Introduction: With the rapid development of technology and the massive adoption of technological instruments in today's day of age, Social Media (SM) has evolved into one of the main ways of communication in most countries worldwide. However, there is also a significant volume of research that continues up to this moment where they reveal the relationship between their extensive use and the emergence of higher rates of risk of developing common psychological diseases, such as depression and differential forms of anxiety behaviors as well as new phenomena such as FoMO, Doomscrolling, higher rates of loneliness, even references to worse quality of interpersonal relationships and overall quality of life. Methods: A cross-sectional study was conducted on a convenience sample of 111 Greek participants from 1/7/2024 until 31/5/2025 that was collected either by live delivery of printed copies or by sharing in common Social Media Platforms digital copies of the questionnaire to assess whether the emergence of problematic behaviours of use of Social Media Platforms relates to the partial or total deterioration of the quality of life of participants. All participants were invited to complete the complete versions of questionnaires for WHOQoL-BREF quality of life assessment and the scale for assessing the degree of addiction to Social Networking Sites/Social Media Platforms Bergen Social Media Addiction Scale as parts of the study’s questionnaire. Results: The sample showed that individuals who reported higher total scores on the BSMAS questionnaire also reported lower scores on the quality of life dimensions in the t-tests and one-way and two-way analyses of variance (ANOVA) with evidence of interaction between the increased use of SM and age in the socioeconomic domain. Regression Analyses showed that increased usage of SM showed a statistically significant negative association between the physical and psychological domains of quality of life. Usage of 2 – 5 hours in Social Media showed a negative association with the psychological domain of Quality of Life (β = - 1.43, p-value = 0.032). Increased use of SM was associated with increased problematic use of SM in the regression analyses with backpropagation (β1 = 2.62, p-value = 0.001) (β2 = 5.76, p-value = 0.000). Age was also associated with increased problematic use of SM in the regression models (β = -0.0636, p-value = 0.005). Problematic use of Social Media was associated with poorer quality of life in all four domains of quality of life examined by the WHOQoL-BREF questionnaire physical domain (D1), socioeconomic domain (D2), psychological domain (D3), environmental domain (D4) ((D1: β = -0.225, p-value = 0.011), ( D2: β = -0.1656, p-value = 0.034), (D3: β = -0.1398, p-value = 0.002 ), (D4: β = -0.1471, p-value = 0.002) ) and all domains of quality of life showed a weak negative correlation with PSMU (p-value < 0.000). Age was negatively associated and correlated with the degree of dependence on SM, i.e., variable age in the sample shows a negative relationship with problematic use of SM in the sample, with those aged 18–35 reporting the highest use of SM (ρ = -0.399, p < 0.000). Also, being a student and using TikTok was correlated with PSMU with correlation coefficients ρ = 0.274 (p-value = 0.003) and ρ = 0.309 (p-value = 0.000) respectively. These results indicate that increased use of SM on average worsens quality of life in every domain tested by the WHOQoL-BREF.