Structural pattern of attachment styles, dark triad personality, sensitivity to rejection with social media addiction mediated by communication skills in students

Using the Internet and social networks is an integral part of our lives, however, excessive use of them has many psychological and social consequences. This study was conducted with the aim of a structural model of attachment styles, dark triad personality, and sensitivity to rejection with social media addiction mediated by communication skills in students.
 
The research method is descriptive-correlational modeling of structural equations. The statistical population of this study consists of all high school students in Nurabad (Delfan) in the academic year 1400, from which a sample of 400 high school students; was selected by cluster sampling method. They completed the online version of the Attachment Style Questionnaire (Hazen and Shiver 1987), Dark Triad Personality Questionnaire (Jones and Paulus 2014), Social Network Addiction Questionnaire (Tutgun-Ünal and Deniz 2015), and Korkut’s (1996) Communication Skills Questionnaire. They also responded to the Sensitivity to Rejection Scale (Dooney and Feldman 1996).
 
The results of structural equation modeling showed that attachment styles, dark personality triads, and rejection sensitivity account for 32% of the variance of communication skills. Also, social media addiction explains 41% of the variance of attachment styles, dark triad personality, Sensitivity to rejection, and communication skills.
 
Overall, the findings suggest that weakening rejection sensitivity, and enhancing Communication skills can be considered in future studies as contributors to social networking sites addiction for prevention or intervention studies.