The Relationship between Social Media Addiction and Depression in Students of a Private College in Karachi

Abstract

In the last two decades, the use of social media has been increased in the world, the addiction of which can affect mental health of the users. Objective: To find out relationship between social media addiction and depression among nursing students at a private college in Karachi. Methods: An analytical cross-sectional study design was used at Horizon School of Nursing and Health Sciences, Karachi. A total of 85 students were approached using purposive sampling, via google forms. Data were collected using a pre-structured questionnaire consisting of socio-demographic questions, Social Networking Addiction Scale and Centre for Epidemiological Studies Depression Scale. Data were analyzed using SPSS version 26.0. Results: Study results showed that 64.7% of the students were in 19-25 years of age, 65.9% were female, 65.9% unmarried, most of them 36.5% were in last year of nursing degree. Moreover, 41.2% students have no addiction while 58.8% were addicted to social media, 20% students had no depression, 15.3% had mild to moderate and 64.7% students had severe depression. A moderate positive relationship was found between social media addiction and depression among nursing students with spearman correlation coefficient (ρ=0.533) and p value < 0.05. Conclusions: The study showed a moderate positive correlation between social media addiction and depression. Therefore, there is need of targeted interventions to prevent the nursing students from addiction of social media and subsequently from depression by holding educational seminars in schools and colleges.