Social Media Use, Addiction and Burnout Levels of Hospital Employees, Effective Factors: A Cross Sectional Study

Background: As years passes by, the usage of social media has become an important public health issue. It is known that problematic social media use is related with health problems. With this study, it is aimed to determine the social media use of hospital employees, the relation between social media addiction and burnout levels and to determine effective factors. Methods: Target population of the cross-sectional study consists of 2627 person between the ages of 18-60 who is working at a university hospital. Minimum sample size was calculated as 321 and reached up to 323 people. Question form, Burnout Scale and Social Media Addiction Adult Form were applied by interviewing the employees face-to-face between the months of March-April 2019.Results: 80.2% of the participants use social media every day, 63.1% of them use social media mostly at evenings. 94.8% of people mostly connect to social media with their phone. Average time spent daily on social media is 91, 33±87, 89 minutes. Daily social media use is significantly higher in women, university graduates, nurses. There is a significant difference between age groups and between married and never married in terms of average time spent daily on social media. Social media addiction scale score is significantly higher in women, never married persons and in the age group 20-29. Weak correlation was determined between scores of social media addiction scale and burnout levels, and age and time spent on social media. Conclusions: It is determined that social media usage in hospital employees is higher than Turkey’s average and there is a positive relation between scores of social media addiction scale and burnout levels. Providing education to employees in order to reduce social media usage, hanging posters related with how over-usage of social media may lead to burnout.