Effect of Social Networking Addiction on Memory Functioning and Aggression Among University Students: Mediating Role of Sleep Quality

Abstract

The purpose of this study is to investigate the relationship between social networking addiction on memory functioning and aggression among university students. Moreover, the mediating role of quality of sleep was also studied between social networking addiction, memory functioning and aggression. The study also investigated the relationship of demographic variable (gender) with social networking addiction, memory functioning, aggression and sleep quality among university students. The sample was comprised of (N = 405) university students among them (n = 203) were male and (n = 202) were females having age ranges from 18 to 27 years, undergraduate bachelor level students. Data was collected from different universities of Islamabad, Lahore, Peshawar, Haripur and Rawalpindi. In this research four scales are used to measure four variables i.e., Social Networking Addiction Scale (SNS) (Griffiths, 2005), Buss-Perry Aggression Questionnaire (Buss & Perry, 1992), Multifactorial Memory Functioning Scale (MMQ) (Troyer & Rich, 2002) and sleep Quality Scale (SQS) (Yi et al., 2006). Results of this study revealed that social networking addiction causes lower memory functioning and higher aggression, there is negative correlation between poor sleep quality and memory functioning and positive correlation between poor sleep quality and aggression. The other significant finding is that male and female university students are almost equally addicted to social networking addiction.