PERSONALITY TRAITS, EMOTIONAL INTELLIGENCE AND NEED FOR AFFILIATION AS PREDICTORS OF SOCIAL MEDIA ADDICTION AMONG UNDERGRADUATE STUDENTS

Abstract

This study investigated personality traits, emotional intelligence and need for affiliation as predictors of social media addiction among undergraduate students of theUniversity of Ibadan. The study adopted cross-sectional survey design while using purposive sampling technique to select three faculties: Education, Sciences and Social Sciences and convenience sampling technique to gather data from 340 undergraduate students. Four validated instruments: Personality Inventory Scale, Emotional Intelligence Scale, Need for Affiliation Scale, and Social Media Addiction Scale were used for data collection. Datacollected were analysis using t-test of independent samples and multiple regression while the hypotheses were tested at a p >.05 level of significance. The result revealed that emotional intelligence [t (338) = 2.59, p <.05] and need for affiliation [t (338) = 19.24, p <.05] significantly influenced social media addiction. Also, personality trait jointly predicted social media addiction among the study population [R2 = .35, F (5, 334) = 35.19, p <.05]. Finally,personality traits, emotional intelligence and need for affiliation jointly predicted social media addiction (R2 =.63, F (7, 332) = 79.05, p < .05). It is concluded that personality traits, emotional intelligence and need for affiliation are excellent predictors of social media addiction amongundergraduate students of the University of Ibadan. Therefore, it is recommended that the university authority should organise more orientation programmes to encourage students to engage more in formal one-on-one social interaction and less of informal social mediainteraction.