Social Media Addiction and Parent–Peer Attachment in Telangana Adolescents: A Cross-sectional Investigation

Background: The ubiquity of social media in contemporary life has raised concerns about its potential negative impacts, particularly among adolescents. While the impact of attachment on adolescent’s social media use has been studied in Western and South Asian contexts, there is a paucity of research on this relationship in the Indian context. Aims: This study aimed to find the relationship between sociodemographic factors, attachment to parents and peers, and social media addiction among adolescents in Telangana, India. Methods: A random cluster sampling method was used to survey 264 6 th to 12 th grade students in two schools. Data was collected using the Parent and Peer Attachment Inventory and the Social Media Disorder Scale. Chi-square analysis, Pearson’s correlation, and multiple regression analysis were done to achieve the research objective. Results: The study found no association between sociodemographic factors (age, gender, socioeconomic status, family type, and number of siblings) and social media addiction. However, significant negative correlations were found between social media addiction and dimensions of attachment to parents and peers, except for communication with friends. Multiple regression revealed that attachment dimensions explained 15.7% of the total variance. The variables, Trust in the father and Alienation from the mother independently and significantly predicted social media addiction. Conclusion: The findings underscore the importance of attachment relationships in understanding social media addiction among Indian adolescents. The results reveal that fathers and mothers’ attachments to adolescents predict adolescent social media addiction differentially. Further research, especially longitudinal studies, is needed to explore these relationships in greater depth.