Assessing symptoms of excessive SNS usage based on user behavior: Identifying effective factors associated with addiction components

Social Networking Sites (SNSs) have exploded as a type of popular communication, suggesting exponential appeal. Unfortunately, one reason for their rise is the potential of excessive usage, which leads to negative consequences that are associated with addiction. In this research, we assessed the symptoms of excessive SNS usage by studying user behavior in SNSs. We employed the modified Internet Addiction Test (IAT) and the modified Bergen Facebook Addiction Scale (BFAS) to reflect addictive behaviors. We previously developed a data collection application and experimentally collected data from undergraduates in Thailand. In this article, we clarify the factors associated with addiction components (e.g., salience, mood modification, tolerance, withdrawal, conflict, and relapse), which are reflected by the questions of IAT and BFAS. We analyzed questionnaire and Facebook data by various methods. Our analytic results identified the effective factors associated with addiction components. Then we employed the Support Vector Regression (SVR) for evaluation. The outcome of our research can be applied for developing prevention strategies to increase the awareness of excessive SNS usage.