The interplay of the Dark Triad and social media use motives to social media disorder

Social media are integral communication channels in our digital world and likewise, studies have examined its benefits and harms, like addictive use (‘social media disorder’; SMD). Among the contributing factors to SMD are personality differences and social media use motivations. The present study examined the relationships of the dark triad of personality, consisting of narcissism, Machiavellianism and psychopathy, to SMD through social media use motivations. The study was conducted from an online survey of 1865 German social media users. Parallel mediation analyses indicate that each dark personality trait was directly and indirectly associated to SMD via entertainment, communication and self-expression motives. There are different indirect associations via relationship maintenance motivation, a negative indirect association was found for narcissism, a positive indirect association for psychopathy and no significant indirect association for Machiavellianism. These findings contribute to a better understanding of the motivational processes underlying the link between dark personality traits and SMD.