Social Media Addiction, Psychological Flexibility, Self-Esteem, and Mindfulness: A Person-Centered Approach

Social media addiction has attracted research attention over the past decade. The reasons and factors that cause social media addiction remain undiscovered. Therefore, the research investigates novel factors using a person-centered approach. More specifically, the purpose of the present study is to determine the students’ profiles of social media addiction and to reveal the relationship between psychological flexibility, self-esteem, and mindfulness. Data was collected from 657 participants using convenience sampling. The research results indicated that university students have 4 distinct profiles. The profiles had characteristic: (i) Moderate user ‘High mindfulness, average social media addiction, but low self-esteem and psychological flexibility’, (ii) Balanced media engager ‘Average level of social media addiction, psychological flexibility, self-esteem, and mindfulness’, (iii) Tech-overuser ‘high social media addiction, but low psychological flexibility, self-esteem, and mindfulness’, (iv) Resilient low-addiction type ‘low social media addiction but high psychological flexibility, self-esteem, and mindfulness’. Mixture modeling approach-based studies incorporate complementary perspectives of the previous psychopathology literature. The findings may help practitioners target at-risk college students with high social media addiction but low psychological flexibility, self-esteem, and mindfulness and design programs to help them mitigate the effects of social media addiction.