Social media addiction: What is the role of content in YouTube?

Background: YouTube, the online video creation and sharing site, supports both video content viewing and content creation activities. For a minority of people, the time spent engaging with YouTube can be excessive and potentially problematic. Method: This study analyzed the relationship between content viewing, content creation, and YouTube addiction in a survey of 410 Indian-student YouTube users. It also examined the influence of content, social, technology, and process gratifications on user inclination toward YouTube content viewing and content creation. Results: The results demonstrated that content creation in YouTube had a closer relationship with YouTube addiction than content viewing. Furthermore, social gratification was found to have a significant influence on both types of YouTube activities, whereas technology gratification did not significantly influence them. Among all perceived gratifications, content gratification had the highest relationship coefficient value with YouTube content creation inclination. The model fit and variance extracted by the endogenous constructs were good, which further validated the results of the analysis. Conclusion: The study facilitates new ways to explore user gratification in using YouTube and how the channel responds to it.