The Role of Loneliness and Self-Esteem in Facebook Addiction among Students

Despite the fact that facebook is established less than 8 years; it is the most prevalent social networking website in the whole world. Nearly more than one billions use this social networking website. The extraordinary facebook social networking website has various advantages, and the number of individuals who are addicted to it, has increased. In fact such individuals have suffered from a disorder in their social relationships.Regarding to pervasive use of social networking among students; in this study we investigate the prediction of facebook addiction based on the self-esteem and loneliness. Population of this study consists of all College students of Jondishapour University and bushehr university, where 300 subjects(150 female and 150 male) were selected by multistage cluster sampling. In order to measure facebook addiction, self-esteem and loneliness the states self-esteem (SSES)inventory by Heatherton & Polivy (1991); The Social and Emotional Loneliness Scale for Adults – Short version (SELSA-S; DiTommaso, Brannen, & Best, 2004) and facebook addiction scale were used. For data analysis, the Pearson correlation and Regression analysis were used. The results showed, among the dimension of loneliness, family lonelinesess and among the state of self-esteem, functional self-esteem could significantly predict the facebook addiction among student. Based on the current results the family loneliness and functional state self-steem are major factors for predicting the facebook adiction among students.