Work Hard, Use Harder? The Longitudinal Association Between Work Addiction and Social Media Addiction in Full-Time Workers by a Cross-Lagged Panel Network Analysis

Social media addiction (SMA) has become a global public issue in recent decades. Considering the increasing use of social media in the workplace as a communication and productivity tool, workers may suffer a higher risk of SMA. Workers are also a notable population susceptible to work addiction (WA) due to the fierce competition in the labor market. By analyzing temporal associations between WA and SMA as well as their symptoms (e.g., salience), our study advances knowledge regarding comorbidity between these behavioral addictions and relationships among their specific symptoms. In a sample of 1,100 workers (M_age = 32.69, standard deviation [SD_age] = 7.76, female = 60.5 percent), we conducted a two-wave, longitudinal survey to examine the relationship(s) between WA and SMA (i.e., construct level) and the association(s) between their specific symptoms (i.e., symptom level) by modeling a cross-lagged panel model and a cross-lagged panel network (CLPN). Both a high prevalence of SMA (7.3 percent) and WA (16.9 percent), as well as their co-occurrence, were found. Results of the cross-lagged panel model and CLPN consistently showed the reciprocal predictions between SMA and WA. Results of CLPN analysis also identified the stronger positive prospective effects of WA on SMA and highlighted the most influential roles of WA-tolerance in predicting SMA, especially SMA-relapse. Besides, mutual but negative predictions between their salience and relapse symptoms were noted in CLPN. Our findings extend the knowledge of the bidirectionality of behavioral addictions and provide practical implications regarding cost-effective interventions for workers' co-occurring behavioral addictions.