Mathematical insights of social media addiction: fractal-fractional perspectives

Abstract

Abstract The excessive use of social media has become a growing concern in the current century, with dependence on these platforms developing into a complex behavioral addiction. Addressing this issue requires the employment of well-directed and inclusive efforts. In pursuit of continuous development in existent strategies, this article presents a non-linear deterministic mathematical model that encapsulates the dynamics of social media addiction within a population. The proposed model incorporates the fractal-fractional order derivative in the sense of the Caputo operator. The objectives of this research are attained by groping the dynamics of the social media addiction model through the stratification of the population into five compartments: susceptible individuals, exposed individuals, addicted individuals, recovery individuals, and those who have quit using social media. The validity of the devised model is established by proving the existence and uniqueness of the solution within the framework of the fixed-point theory. The Ulam-Hyer’s stability is established through nonlinear functional analysis, perturbing the problem with a small factor. Utilizing the Adam Bashforth numerical scheme, we obtain numerical solutions, which we validate through MATLAB simulations. Additionally, we explore the application of artificial neural networks (ANNs) to approximate solutions, presenting a significant innovation in this domain. We propose the adoption of this novel method for solving integral equations that elucidate the dynamics of social media addiction, surpassing traditional numerical methods. Numerical results are illustrated across various fractional orders and fractal dimensions, with comparisons made against integer orders. Our study indicates that ANN outperforms the Adams-Bashforth algorithm, offering a dependable approach to problem-solving. Throughout the article, we underscore the competitive advantage of our proposed strategy, providing a more nuanced understanding of the complex dynamics outlined in the model.