Social networks addiction and loneliness in university students from Lima

Abstract

The study links to social networks addiction and loneliness in university students from Metropolitan Lima. 146 students from private universities in Lima participated, 56.1% were women, between 18 and 30 years old (M=23). The Social Network Addiction Questionnaire (SNA) and the De Jong Gierveld Loneliness Scale were applied. The results indicate that addiction to social networks correlates positively with loneliness, although the dimension lack of control in the use of social network and social loneliness do not reach the level of significance; calculating the strength of de correlations finds that they are relatively low. As soon as the variables are compared by gender, significant differences were only found in the dimension lack of control in the use social networks of the SNA, but not in the other dimension of both instruments. It was found that the most used application is Instagram, that the most used devises are the Smartphone and the laptop and that a little more than 60% of the participants spend more than three hours connected to the internet and social networks daily.