Are you familiar with social media? The reason may be related to your personality trait

Ever wonder what makes you use social media so much? Blame the interaction of your personality traits, as researchers have found that it can affect the likelihood of developing addiction to a social network. The findings of the study suggested that personality traits in particular – neuroticism, conscience, and consent – were associated with social network addiction.

“Much research has been done on how the interaction of certain personality traits influences addiction to things like alcohol and drugs,” said co-author Isaac Vaghefi, Associate Professor of Information Systems at State University Binghamton in New York.

For the study, which was presented at the 51st Hawaii International Conference on Systems Science, researchers collected self-report data from nearly 300 college-age students. The researchers found that these three personality traits – neuroticism, conscience, and consent – are part of the five-factor personality model, an established framework used to give a personal understanding of a human being.

They also found that the other two traits in the model – extraversion and openness to experience – did not play much of a role in the development of social network addiction. According to the researchers, neuroticism – the extent to which people experience negative emotions such as stress and anxiety – seemed to increase the likelihood of developing addiction to social networking sites.

On the other hand, higher levels of conscience – with persuasive control and the drive to achieve specific goals – seemed to reduce the likelihood of developing social network slavery. But when the experiment was combined, they found that neuroticism seemed to measure the impact of conscience as it relates to social network addiction.

Consensus – the extent to which someone is friendly, sympathetic and helpful – alone did not have a major impact on social network slavery until it was combined with conscience, the researchers noted.