PERSONALITY TRAITS AS PREDICTORS OF SOCIAL MEDIA USAGE PATTERNS AND PSYCHOLOGICAL WELL-BEING AMONG UNIVERSITY STUDENTS
Keywords:
Personality Traits, Social Media Usage, Psychological Well-being, University Students, Big Five InventoryAbstract
The study investigates the extent to which personality traits predict social media usage patterns and psychological well-being among university students. A cross-sectional survey design was used, with data collected from a stratified random sample of 200 undergraduate students (100 males, 100 females) from a Nigerian university. The Big Five personality traits were measured using the Big Five Inventory (BFI; John & Srivastava, 1999), social media usage was assessed via a structured questionnaire, and psychological well-being was measured using Ryff’s Psychological Well-being Scale (Ryff & Keyes, 1995). Regression analyses revealed that personality traits jointly explained a substantial portion of variance in both outcomes. Specifically, personality explained 42% of the variance in social media usage (R² = .42, F(3, 196) = 47.3, p < .001) and 50% of the variance in psychological well-being (R² = .50, F(3, 196) = 65.3, p < .001). Neuroticism was the strongest positive predictor of social media use (β = .45, p < .001) and the strongest negative predictor of well-being (β = –.48, p < .001). Extraversion was positively associated with both higher social media use (β = .28, p < .001) and greater well-being (β = .25, p = .002), whereas conscientiousness was negatively associated with social media use (β = –.22, p = .003) and positively associated with well-being (β = .30, p < .001). These findings suggest that individual personality differences play a critical role in shaping online behaviour and psychological outcomes.
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