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Exploring social media addiction among student Millennials

Stacy Grau (Department of Marketing, Neeley School of Business, Texas Christian University, Fort Worth, Texas, USA)
Susan Kleiser (Department of Marketing, Neeley School of Business, Texas Christian University, Fort Worth, Texas, USA)
Laura Bright (Department of Advertising, University of Texas, Austin, Texas, USA and Department of Strategic Communication, Texas Christian University, Fort Worth, Texas, USA)

Qualitative Market Research

ISSN: 1352-2752

Article publication date: 8 April 2019

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Abstract

Purpose

The purpose of this paper is to explore the phenomenon of social media addiction among student Millennials. The authors use the consumption continuum as a theoretical framework.

Design/methodology/approach

The authors used a “media deprivation” methodology including both qualitative and quantitative measures.

Findings

The authors found that social media may exist in some respondents in a “near addiction” phase or the “social media addiction” phase according to the consumption continuum framework. Several themes are discussed.

Research limitations/implications

While the sample is small, this paper is an exploratory study of social media addiction among Millennials and the first to apply the consumption continuum framework to this context (Martin et al., 2013).

Practical implications

This paper explores the idea of social media addiction and begins to examine the role that marketing plays in perpetuating this addiction.

Originality/value

This paper expands the idea beyond Facebook addiction (platform agnostic) and is the first to apply the consumption continuum framework.

Keywords

Citation

Grau, S., Kleiser, S. and Bright, L. (2019), "Exploring social media addiction among student Millennials", Qualitative Market Research, Vol. 22 No. 2, pp. 200-216. https://doi.org/10.1108/QMR-02-2017-0058

Publisher

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Emerald Publishing Limited

Copyright © 2019, Emerald Publishing Limited

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