Exploring social media addiction among student Millennials

Abstract

Purpose

The purpose of this paper is to explore the phenomenon of social media addiction among student Millennials. The authors use the consumption continuum as a theoretical framework.

Design/methodology/approach

The authors used a “media deprivation” methodology including both qualitative and quantitative measures.

Findings

The authors found that social media may exist in some respondents in a “near addiction” phase or the “social media addiction” phase according to the consumption continuum framework. Several themes are discussed.

Research limitations/implications

While the sample is small, this paper is an exploratory study of social media addiction among Millennials and the first to apply the consumption continuum framework to this context (Martin et al., 2013).

Practical implications

This paper explores the idea of social media addiction and begins to examine the role that marketing plays in perpetuating this addiction.

Originality/value

This paper expands the idea beyond Facebook addiction (platform agnostic) and is the first to apply the consumption continuum framework.

Citation

Grau, S., Kleiser, S. and Bright, L. (2019), "Exploring social media addiction among student Millennials", Qualitative Market Research, Vol. 22 No. 2, pp. 200-216. https://doi.org/10.1108/QMR-02-2017-0058