The impact of addiction to Twitter among university students

Abstract

Twitter has made a big impact on the social environment especially when it comes to young adults that it has become decisively addictive. The objective of this paper was to examine the impact on the addictive usage of Twitter among undergraduates. The questionnaire survey research was conducted on Universiti Teknologi MARA (UiTM) students. The results indicated that of the 100 responses, 34% tended to be heavy Twitter users when they tweeted 5-10 tweets per day. In more extreme case, 10% lost count on how much they tweeted per day. Majority of them (71%) also proclaimed that they were addicted to Twitter with the intention to gain followers (45%), updating news (30%), to know what's happening around them (15%) and to kill their free time (10%). Future studies should assess on the advantages and disadvantages that government agencies or phone service providers may gain based on the findings. © 2014 Springer-Verlag.