Abstract

The current study analyzes the usage of social network services(SNS) and their addiction along the dimension of collectivism-individualism. Additionally, the study examines the effects of individuals’ gender, extroversion, and age, which are the known variables affecting the usage of SNS. Collectivism-individualism in SNS and offline environments may not correspond to one another. Therefore, the study measured the collectivism-individualism of the two environments separately. For this purpose, we designed a measurement scale for the SNS which involves kin-nonkin distinction. The sample consisted of 253 adolescents ages thirteen to fifteen and 246 adults ages eighteen to twenty-five, summing up to 499 samples. Results indicated that individualism within the SNS showed a positive relationship with the amount of SNS usage. Furthermore, female users spent more time on SNS and showed higher addiction than males. While adults had longer experience with SNS and spent more time on it daily than adolescents, they did not show a significant difference in regards to SNS addiction. The correlation analysis indicated that collectivism-individualism between SNS and offline environments had a weak correlation. The kin individualism in SNS significantly predicted SNS addiction after controlling for the effect of age, gender, and extroversion. Taken together, these findings indicate the need for an appropriate collectivism-individualism scale that corresponds to the SNS environments. The results also suggest that kin individualism in the SNS environment can be the main factor for SNS addiction.