The Effects of IT Addiction on Trust and Social Influence Perceptions: An Empirical Study of Social Networking Site Users

Technology addiction has been the focus of many recent studies in the information systems (IS) literature. This paper examines how user perceptions and usage intentions toward social networking sites (SNS) are distorted by their level of addiction to the technology. To this end, a research model that incorporates the technology addiction construct and two system-referenced perceptions (trust and social influence) has been constructed and tested to explain the effects of addiction on augmenting one's perceptions of SNS. Data were obtained from an online survey of 202 SNS users in Saudi Arabia. A structural equation modelling technique was used to evaluate the proposed model. The findings confirmed that user level of SNS addiction influence their reason-based usage intentions by distorting user perceptions toward the technology. Theoretical and practical implications of the findings are discussed.