Impact of Physical Activity and Bio-Psycho-Social Factors on Social Network Addiction and Gender Differences in Spanish Undergraduate Education Students

Abstract

Social network use has increased in recent years. Social networks are fast-changing and may cause negative effects such as dependence and addiction. Hence, it was decided to establish two research aims: (1) to identify the social network used by university students and their use levels according to their sex and (2) to analyse how age, body mass index, physical activity, emotional intelligence and social network type affect addiction to social networks according to young people’s sex. A cross-sectional study was designed involving Spanish university students from Education Degrees. The mean age of the participants was 20.84 years (±2.90). Females made up 69.8% of the sample and males 30.2%. An online questionnaire was administered that included sociodemographic questions, IPAQ-SF and TMMS-24. This study found that all students use WhatsApp and more than 97% have YouTube and Instagram accounts. The linear regression model obtained was as follows: social network addiction = 3.355 + 0.336*emotional attention − 0.263*emotional clarity. There is a positive relationship between social network addiction and emotional attention (r = 0.25; p < 0.001) and negative relationships between social network addiction and emotional clarity (r = −0.16; p = 0.002) and between social network addiction and age (r = −0.17; p = 0.001). University students report lower levels of social network addiction and slightly higher levels of social network addiction among females. In addition, there are significant differences between the average social network addiction scores of university students in terms of their use of Telegram, TikTok and Twitch.