Evaluating social media addiction and self-medicating behavior in adults in Saudi Arabia: A pilot study

Objectives: This study sought to study how social media addiction and self-medicating behavior are related in adults in Saudi Arabia. Materials and methods: We utilized an online self-administered survey using multiple-choice questions, free-text comments, and a five-point Likert scale to evaluate self-medication behavior. We used the validated [Social Media Addiction Scale (SMAS)] to evaluate social media addiction. Survey participation spanned from July 2021 to December 2021. Results: 692 participants responded to the online survey. Approximately 71.5% (n=495) of participants reported no self-medication practices. Vitamins were the most used among self-medicating participants (10.5%) followed by analgesics (8.5%). The SMAS scale mean was 41.7 +/- 8.76 indicating a moderate tendency to social media addiction with no difference between males and females. Social media addiction showed a weak but statistically significant correlation to self-medication r(692)= 0.036 p=0.035. Social media addiction was weakly and adversely correlated to age in a statistical significance correlation r(692)= -0.116 p=0.002. Conclusions: Saudi adults demonstrated moderate inclination towards social media addiction with positive correlation of social media addiction to self-medication and invers correlation to age.