Moderating roles of gender and self-esteem in the link between relationship satisfaction and social media addiction

Nowadays, social media is an inevitable part of our lives. The literature revealed that extensive social media use or addiction was associated with negative personal and interpersonal outcomes for individuals (Andreassen, Torsheim, Brunborg, & Pallesen, 2012). One of these outcomes are argued to be dissatisfaction in romantic relationships (e.g., Valenzuela, Halpern, & Katz, 2014). However, it can be argued that, individuals’ happiness in their romantic relationships may affect their tendency for social media addiction. Moreover, impacts of relationship satisfaction on social media addiction may change depending on gender and self-esteem level of individuals. The aim of the present study was to investigate the effects of relationship satisfaction on social media addiction and to reveal the moderating roles of gender and self-esteem levels in this relationship. It was proposed that relationship satisfaction would be negatively associated with social media addiction. In addition, females who have lower levels of relationship satisfaction were hypothesized to be more likely to report higher scores on social media addiction than males and females who had higher levels of relationship satisfaction. Finally, individuals who have higher self-esteem and relationship satisfaction scores were proposed to have the lowest scores on social media addiction. Participants were 243 university students from Turkey [78 males, 165 females] and the inclusion criteria for data analysis was to be in a romantic relationship at least for one month. The data was analyzed using regression and moderated multiple regression techniques. The findings revealed that, relationship satisfaction was negatively and significantly associated with social media addiction and gender moderated the effects of relationship satisfaction on social media addiction in the proposed direction. However, moderating effect of self-esteem on the link between relationship satisfaction and social media addiction was not significant. The findings were discussed regarding theoretical and practical implications along with suggestions for future research