ASSOCIATION OF SYMPTOMATOLOGIC DEPRESSION WITH SOCIAL MEDIA ADDICTION AMONG UNIVERSITY STUDENTS IN MALAYSIA

Abstract

Depression is a mental disorder that affects almost 2.3% of Malaysians and has been shown to be more prevalent in Malaysian students. Social media is defined as “websites and software programs used for social networking and their growing popularity has indicative of becoming addicted to it. Strong correlation has been made between depression and social media addiction but there is lack of such specific studies in Malaysia. This study is aimed to identify the association of social media addiction with depression among university student in Malaysia. This research was conducted on Malaysian undergraduate and postgraduate students using an online questionnaire consisted of sociodemographic characteristics and two validated questionnaires of Center for Epidemiologic Studies Depression Scale Revised (CESD-10) and Bergen Social Media Addiction Scale (BSMAS). A total of 381 responses were analysed and a strong positive correlation revealed increase of social media addiction causing depression.

Keywords

• depression, social media addiction, undergraduate student, postgraduate student, university student, malaysia