The purpose of the current study is to examine the mediating roles of social media craving and self-control in the relationship between social media addiction and psychological adjustment problems among university students within the framework of the Interaction of Person-Affect-Cognition-Execution (I-PACE) model. To this end, data were collected from a total of 324 university students (105 male and 219 female). Of the participants, 65 are first-year students, 123 are second-year students, 59 are third-year students, 75 are fourth-year students and 1 is a fifth-year student. One person did not indicate his university class level. The age range of the participants is 18–35, while the mean age is 20.98 (SD = 2.41). According to the results, the simple mediation roles of social media craving and self-control in the relationship between psychological adjustment problems and social media addiction of university students are significant, respectively (B = 0.1847, SE = 0.0369, 95% CI = [0.1121, 0.2578]; B = 0.0582, SE = 0.0165, 95% CI = [0.0288, 0.0925]). In addition, the serial mediation roles of social media craving and self-control in the relationship between psychological adjustment problems and social media addiction were found to be significant (B = 0.0119, SE = 0.0048, 95% CI = [0.0041, 0.0228]). It was concluded that social media craving and self-control play significant roles in the mechanism underlying why psychological adjustment problems experienced by university students increase their risk of becoming addicted to social media.