Investigation of the serial mediation roles of social media craving and self-control in the relationship between social media addiction and psychological adjustment problems of university students

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.