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. 2017 Jan 9;12(1):e0169839.
doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0169839. eCollection 2017.

Problematic Social Media Use: Results from a Large-Scale Nationally Representative Adolescent Sample

Fanni Bányai  1   2 , Ágnes Zsila  1   2 , Orsolya Király  1 , Aniko Maraz  1 , Zsuzsanna Elekes  3 , Mark D Griffiths  4 , Cecilie Schou Andreassen  5 , Zsolt Demetrovics  1
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Problematic Social Media Use: Results from a Large-Scale Nationally Representative Adolescent Sample

Fanni Bányai et al. PLoS One. .

Abstract

Despite social media use being one of the most popular activities among adolescents, prevalence estimates among teenage samples of social media (problematic) use are lacking in the field. The present study surveyed a nationally representative Hungarian sample comprising 5,961 adolescents as part of the European School Survey Project on Alcohol and Other Drugs (ESPAD). Using the Bergen Social Media Addiction Scale (BSMAS) and based on latent profile analysis, 4.5% of the adolescents belonged to the at-risk group, and reported low self-esteem, high level of depression symptoms, and elevated social media use. Results also demonstrated that BSMAS has appropriate psychometric properties. It is concluded that adolescents at-risk of problematic social media use should be targeted by school-based prevention and intervention programs.

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Conflict of interest statement

The authors have declared that no competing interests exist.

Figures

Fig 1
Fig 1. The Three Classes Obtained from the Latent Profile Analysis.
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Grants and funding

This study was supported by the Hungarian National Research, Development and Innovation Office (Grant numbers: K111938, K111740). Ágnes Zsila was supported by the New National Excellence Program awarded by the Ministry of Human Resources. The funding institutions had no role in the study design or the collection, analysis and interpretation of the data, writing the manuscript, or the decision to submit the paper for publication.