Increase in media use places question of media addiction as important issue for general quality of life. In those terms there is an assumption that personal characteristics in combination with stressful situations cause repression of inner impulses, thus provoking some psychological conditions such as depression, anxiety or loneliness.
Appearance of social networks opened new realms of life simulation, potentially boosting media addictions. Because of appearance and widespread use of new media, there is a need to explore potential hazards of such activities, one of them being media addiction.
Data point to increases in overall media use over the last 60 years. On the other hand, decreases in political participation are registered together with decline in socializing and active membership in professional organizations for the same period. Research is conducted through nationally representative survey in Serbia during 2013. All hypotheses of this study have been confirmed including main one, saying that increases in media addiction cause decreases in political participation.
Social networks, such as Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn have been becoming very popular during the last few years. Facebook is currently the world’s most populous “country” with more than 1 .3 billion “ inhabitants”. According to the statistical data, the users share their impressions daily in the form of statuses about upcoming events and present state of affairs, their problems, plans, novel experiences about the products, political stances, and alike.
Public opinion is important for political decisions. Politicians change public attitudes. They often turn public disagreement to predominant support for some policies (Mutz, etal. 1996). Long term change of political attitudes is caused by slow development of personality types (Riesman 1950). Research efforts in the field of political persuasion were based on personality stability, rather than media influence. On the other hand, changes in public opinion and social conditions occur frequently.
This exploratory study seeks to expand previous research by addressing the main research hypothesis that increase in media addiction causes decrease in political participation.
With explosion of technological innovation, people tend to develop an addiction to new media such as mobile devices, computers, and gaming consoles. This study expands the previous research by addressing
the overall (new and old) media addiction in Serbia by using eight universal indicators.
Appearance of internet and its spread to 38.8% of world population from 1995 to 2013 indicate that new media bring significant changes to societies around the world. Features of new media such as interactivity and possibility to use it from anywhere anytime indicate internet may be highly addictive.
The addiction is defined as a dependence on a behavior or substance that a person is powerless to stop.
This study examines impact of addictive media use to reception capabilities towards less preferred media. Addiction to all media was measured in order to compare will to receive less preferred media. Results show that those media addicts that are happy with internet are least happy with other media when compared to those who are primarily happy with television, radio or print and their relation towards less preferred media.