The Correlation between Social Media Addiction and Emotional Eating during the COVID-19 Quarantine Period

ABSTRACT

This study was conducted with 458 participants. The demographic and health information of the participants along with the Social Media Addiction, Emotional Eating Scale were obtained. The level of social media addiction in adults was moderate, and women were more interested in social media than men. As the average age of participants increased, the virtual tolerance, virtual communication, social media scores decreased (p < .05). The study found that 51.6% of individuals with emotional eating tendencies happened to be obese. The social media addiction scale scores of those with emotional eating tendencies were higher than those without emotional eating tendencies (p < .05).

KEYWORDS:

• Social media addiction
• emotional eating
• quarantine
• nutrition

Acknowledgments

The authors thank all the participants who devoted their time to participate in this study. We are grateful for their helpful and sincere cooperation and for their warm acceptance of the work.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Informed consent

All participants included in the study were informed and their consent was taken before filling out the questionnaire.

Limitations

The current study poses some limitations. First, it is difficult to make causal inferences as the data presented here and the relevant analyzes are derived from a cross-sectional design. Second, a web-based survey was used to avoid possible infection risk; therefore, the participants consisted of those with an ability and knowledge to fill out an online form. Thus, the possibility of sampling bias should be considered. Third, the duration of technology-based activities, the level of physical activities, and the psychological status were not assessed and investigated in this specific study. As a result, the data in the study were collected online and the results were interpreted based on the answers given by the participants. In addition, since it is in the quarantine period and it was held in Ankara, the capital of Turkey, the results cannot be generalized.

Credit authorship contribution statement

PG: Conceptualization, methodology, writing – review& editing, project administration

NS: Conceptualization, methodology, writing – original draft

SY: Conceptualization, methodology, writing – original draft

BA: Uploading questionnaires to the system - collecting data

ŞK: Uploading questionnaires to the system - collecting data

Additional information

Funding

No financial support was received for this specific research.