Impact of Social Media, Gender and Age on Narcissistic Development among Ebonyi State University Undergraduates

Abstract

The present study examined impacts of social media and gender in narcissistic development among Ebonyi State university undergraduates. Participants were two hundred and thirty-eight (248) comprising male (147) and female (101) students of Ebonyi State University, Abakaliki who were randomly selected among the population of students in the school. Their ages ranged between 18 to 30 years with a mean age of 24.37 years (SD = 6.80). Cross sectional design was adopted. Two instruments were used for data collection. The narcissistic personality inventory and social media affinity scale. Two hypotheses were tested. Hierarchical multiple regression was the main statistic used for data analysis. Result of Hierarchical Multiple Regression analysis showed that social media was a positively significant predictor of narcissism among students (β = -.56, p < .001), accounting for 32% of the variance in narcissistic development (∆R² = .32). The result also showed that gender was a negative significant predictor of narcissism of students (β = -.56, p < .001), accounting for 3% of the variance in narcissistic development (∆R² = .03). Similarly, age was equally found to be a negative predictor of narcissism among students, accounting for 3% variance in narcissistic development among students (∆R² = .03). The implications of the findings are; that spending too much time on the social media results to narcissism among young people; that both gender and age are potential factors that explain narcissism among young people. The study is limited by choice of involving only one study area. It is recommended that further studies interested in same variable may consider adopting mixed method in order to gain more understanding of the links between the IVs and the DV.