The Relationship between College Students’ SNS Addiction Tendency and Their Interpersonal Problems: Focused on the Moderating Effect of Social Support

Abstract

This study was conducted to find out the moderating effect of each of three sub-factors of social support, family’s support, friends’ support and important others’ support in college students’ SNS addiction tendency and interpersonal problems. For this purpose, a survey was conducted with male and female freshmen to seniors at three universities, University A located in Seoul, University B in Gyeonggi-do and University C in Gangwon-do. Excluding the questionnaires of students who did not use an SNS or responded inadequately, 315 copies of data were used in an analysis. The main results of a study of verification using a hierarchical regression analysis are as follows: First, all SNS addiction tendency and family’s support, friends’ support, important others’ support were suggested as factors having significant impacts on interpersonal problems, and SNS addiction tendency had a positive impact while family’s support, friends’ support and important others’ support had negative impacts. Second, in the relationship between SNS addiction tendency and interpersonal problems, family’s support showed a significant moderating effect. Third, in the relationship between SNS addiction tendency and interpersonal problems, friends’ support showed a significant moderating effect. Fourth, important others’ support did not show any significant moderating effect in the relationship between college students’ SNS addiction tendency and their interpersonal problems. Based on the results of this study, suggestions were made for the prevention and mitigation of interpersonal problems college students with SNS addiction tendency come to experience and for more practical intervention to strengthen and maintain social support from their family and friends.