Relationships of the Big Five Personality Traitsto Problem Use of Social Media

Active use of social networks often forms dependence on them, which leads to psychological distress and problematic use of social networks. The results of an empirical study are presented, the purpose of which is to identify the hypothesized relationships between the traits of the Big Five personality model and addiction to social networks. The empirical basis of the study was the results of online testing of 6444 respondents (average age M = 23.2 years, SD = 10.2), among them 3729 women (M = 23.7, SD = 10.7) and 2715 men (M = 22.5, SD = 9.5). The study used the Russian version (author S.A. Shchebetenko) of the Big Five Inventory (BFI) questionnaire and the social network addiction questionnaire (authors V.P. Sheinov and A.S. Devitsyn). The study found that addiction to social networks is interrelated with all traits of the Big Five personality model: extraversion, neuroticism and openness to experience are positively interrelated, and agreeableness and conscientiousness are negatively interrelated. The average values of all these personality traits in women are statistically significantly (p ˂ 0,001) higher than the corresponding indicators in men.