Comparison 1: Survey and Interview Data—Participant #51

Comparisons Within This Study

Comparison 1: Survey and Interview Data—Participant #51

The first interview responses, from Participant #51, were compared with their survey responses to determine the likelihood of social media addiction. Below, some relevant survey questions along with Participant #51’s answers have been selected:

Table 8

Comparison I Survey Answers

In participant #51’s interview, he was asked whether or not he would consider himself addicted to social media. Before being asked this question, the interviewers discussed his social media habits and attitudes and defined social media addiction with the following definition: Although social media addiction is not yet a classified disorder in the DSM-5, “a key aspect of social media addiction is that individuals do not only use social media more frequently, but may experience distress without it” (Lin et al., 2017, as cited in Larson, 2021, p. 233).

Participant #51 stated that he would place himself on the spectrum of social media addiction and that he does have qualities of social media addiction. This is interesting because while looking back at his survey answers, he indicated that he rarely finds himself using social media more than anticipated and that he only feels mild discomfort in the absence of social media. It appears that once he was presented with the concept of social media addiction, he reflected on his habits. Mostly, his survey responses do coincide with his statement of placing himself low on the “spectrum” of social media addiction.