Accepted for/Published in: Journal of Medical Internet Research
Date Submitted: Jan 7, 2021
Date Accepted: Nov 10, 2021
Heterogeneity of Prevalence of Social Media Addiction across Multiple Classification Schemes: Latent Profile Analysis
ABSTRACT
Background:
As social media is a major channel of interpersonal communication in the digital age, social media addiction has emerged as a novel mental health issue that has raised considerable concerns among researchers, health professionals, policymakers, mass media, and the general public.
Objective:
This study examined the prevalence of social media addiction derived from four major classification schemes (strict monothetic, strict polythetic, monothetic, and polythetic), with latent profiles embedded in the empirical data adopted as the benchmark for comparisons. The extent of matching between the classification of each scheme and the actual data pattern was evaluated using sensitivity and specificity analysis. The associations between social media addiction and two comorbid mental health conditions—depression and anxiety—were investigated.
Methods:
A cross-sectional online survey was conducted, and the replicability of findings was assessed in two independent samples comprising 573 UK (46% men; mean age 43.62, SD 12.24) and 474 US (47% men; mean age 44.67, SD 12.99) adults. The demographic characteristics of both samples approximated those of their respective population.
Results:
The prevalence estimates of social media addiction varied across the classification schemes, ranging from 1% to 15% for the UK sample and 0% to 11% for the US sample. The latent profile analysis identified three latent groups for both samples: low-risk, at-risk, and high-risk. The sensitivity, specificity, and negative predictive values were high (83%-100%) for all the classification schemes, except for the relatively lower sensitivity (73%-74%) for the polythetic scheme. However, the polythetic scheme had high positive predictive values (88%-94%), whereas such values were low (2%-43%) for the other three classification schemes. The group membership yielded by the polythetic scheme was largely consistent (95%-96%) with that of the benchmark.
Conclusions:
Among the classification schemes, the polythetic scheme is more well-balanced across all four indices.
Citation
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