Relationship between social media addiction, psychological illness and disordered eating attitude among college youth in Kuching

• Main Author: lzzaty, Hamidi
• Format: Thesis
• Language: English; English
• Published: Universiti Malaysia Sarawak (UNIMAS) 2020
• Subjects: RA Public aspects of medicine
• Online Access: http://ir.unimas.my/id/eprint/37736/1/IZZATY%20%2824%20pgs%29.pdf; http://ir.unimas.my/id/eprint/37736/4/Izzaty%20H.pdf; http://ir.unimas.my/id/eprint/37736/

The rising trend of disordered eating globally and also in Malaysia has led to a number of research that is investigating the factors associated with disordered eating attitude. These factors are social media addiction and psychological illness. Methodology: This is a quantitative, cross-sectional study that determines the relationship between social media addiction, psychological illness and disordered eating attitude among college youth in private Higher Learning Institutions (HLIs). Self-administered questionnaires were distributed among the respondents. Data was entered and analysed using SPSS version 22. Results: A total of 229 respondents have participated in this study. There is positive correlation between social media addiction, psychological illness and disordered eating attitude. The multiple regression analysis have identified social media addiction (r=0.241, p <0.05) and psychological illness (r=0.271, p<0.05) as significant predictors to disordered eating attitude. This 2-factor model could only explained 8.1 % total variance of disordered eating attitude. The psychological illness is found to have partial mediating effect on the relationship between social media addiction and disordered eating attitude because both direct effect (coefficient C'= 0.16, p<0.01) and indirect effect (coefficient A= 0.17, p<0.01 and coefficient B= 0.27, p<0.01) are significant Conclusion: Social media addiction and psychological illness are significant predictors to disordered eating attitude. Psychological illness has a partial mediating effect between social media addiction and disordered eating attitude.