In The Relations Among Social Media Addiction, Self-Esteem, and Life Satisfaction in University Students the authors, Nazir Hawi, and Maya Samaha, research whether there is a correlation between the addictive use of social media, self-esteem, and satisfaction with life.

Researchers created the Social Media Addiction Questionnaire (SMAQ), which was based off of the Facebook Intrusion Questionnaire. A total of 396 respondents filled out the online survey, all being from one university. Some key results that were very interesting were females reported having higher levels of addictive social media use. Despite this, there was no indication that social media had any effect on satisfaction with life, for both males and females. Lastly, researchers found that “there exists a negative relationship between social media addiction and self-esteem and a mediated negative relationship between social media addiction and satisfaction with life.” The article pointed out that although there might be a weak association right now, in the future as technology continues to advance, a stronger association may develop. 

At the end of the case they pointed out their limitations, one of them being that the sample was students from only one university. I would be interested to see the results from different universities. I would assume that more school-oriented students that attend Ivy League schools for example would have less time to use social media and therefore less of an attachment to social media. Whereas those who attend a “party” school would have a stronger attachment to social media. But this is just my own hypothesis.