Article

Understanding Social Media Addiction in the Digital Society through Sleep Deprivation, Conflict, and Emotional Health

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Abstract

In the context of an increasingly digitized society, social media addiction among students has become a pressing concern with implications for psychological well-being, sleep behavior, and interpersonal relationships. This study aims to investigate the behavioral and emotional predictors of social media addiction using a dataset comprising 705 student respondents from various academic levels and countries. The research focuses on four core variables: average daily social media usage, sleep duration per night, self-reported mental health scores, and the frequency of conflicts caused by social media use. Descriptive statistics reveal that social media addiction scores are heavily skewed toward the upper end of the scale, with 209 students (29.6%) scoring 7 and 144 students (20.4%) scoring 8 on a 0–9 scale. Conflict is also prevalent, with 261 students (37.0%) reporting three conflicts and 204 students (28.9%) reporting two conflicts related to social media use. Correlation analysis shows strong relationships between addiction score and the examined variables, with the highest correlation observed with mental health score (r = –0.95), followed by conflict frequency (r = 0.93), average daily usage (r = 0.83), and sleep hours (r = –0.76). Three regression models Linear Regression, Random Forest Regressor, and XGBoost Regressor, were applied to predict addiction scores. XGBoost achieved the best performance, with an R² score of 0.992 and MSE of 0.026, followed by Random Forest (R² = 0.991, MSE = 0.029) and Linear Regression (R² = 0.950, MSE = 0.126). These findings confirm that social media addiction is strongly associated with behavioral intensity, emotional vulnerability, and social conflict. The study contributes to a deeper understanding of digital dependency and underscores the importance of holistic interventions that target not only digital behavior but also psychological and relational well-being in the digital age.

Keywords: social media addiction, digital society, sleep deprivation, conflict, mental health, machine learning, students

How to Cite:

Aljohani, R. A. & Alnahdi, A., (2025) “Understanding Social Media Addiction in the Digital Society through Sleep Deprivation, Conflict, and Emotional Health”, Journal of Digital Society 1(4), 314-327. doi: https://doi.org/10.63913/jds.v1i4.45