Can’t do without your smartphone? It could say a lot about your personality…

Alexandra Maftei and Acnana-Maria Patrausanu, two psychology researchers at Alexandru Ioan Cuza University, carried out a study aimed at determining the indirect effects of nomophobia and social media addiction and their link with narcissism and symptoms of stress.

Narcissistic individuals are more afraid of being without their phones, study finds

The researchers hypothesized that narcissistic people would exhibit more symptoms of social media addiction and nomophobia. They also suggested that high levels of social media addiction are closely linked to increased stress.

To support these hypotheses, the study included 559 participants from Eastern Romania, aged between 18 and 45 years old. Of these, 394 were post-secondary students and 165 were university students. This sample was composed of 71.7% women. Participants were recruited through classroom announcements and volunteers completed a set of assessments based on:

• The “Narcissistic Personality Inventory” questionnaire (Romanian version of the depression, anxiety and stress scale);
• The Bergen Social Media Addiction Scale;
• The Nomophobia questionnaire developed by Yildirim and Correia.

All of these questionnaires were therefore submitted to participants through an online survey. Each answer corresponds to a number of points. By calculating the total score of each test, the participant obtains a number. The higher it is, the more it has a link with the factor studied.

According to the average of the results after the evaluations, narcissism in individuals would be positively linked to nomophobia and addiction to social networks. Likewise, these latter factors would be linked to stress.

According to the researchers, highly narcissistic people could be more likely to develop this type of behavioral addiction, which would lead to an increase in stress levels.

Narcissism and nomophobia more present among the youngest

Taking participants’ age into account, this study also found that younger people were more likely to exhibit increased levels of nomophobia and narcissism. Indeed, social networks offer narcissistic people the unique opportunity to satisfy their need for attention. Many of them are then motivated to devote more time and effort to their social media activity.

Results which remain to be confirmed

Although the study provides information on the links between narcissism, social media use and stress, it also has limitations.

Indeed, as the sample was made up of predominantly young participants from the same region, it is impossible to generalize the results to the entire population.

Further research may be helpful to understand how to combat digital addictive behaviors, particularly when they are fueled by narcissistic needs and lead to increased stress.