EFFECTIVENESS OF ACCEPTANCE AND COMMITMENT THERAPY (ACT) IN REDUCING SOCIAL MEDIA ADDICTION AND ENHANCING PSYCHOLOGICAL FLEXIBILITY AMONG NURSING STUDENTS

Abstract

Use of social media can negatively affect the academic performance and psychological well-being of students. This study aimed to evaluate the effectiveness of an Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT) based intervention in reducing social media addiction and enhancing psychological flexibility among nursing students. A randomized controlled trial (RCT) was conducted and 24 students from a nursing institution were recruited, who were randomly assigned to an experimental group (n=12) and a control group (n=12). The measures used included the Demographic Information Form, Acceptance and Action Questionnaire-II (AAQ-II) (Bond et al., 2011) and the Bergen Social Media Addiction Scale (BSMAS) (Andreassen et al., 2016) before and after the intervention. paired samples and independent samples t-tests were applied to investigate the data. Results indicated that the ACT-based intervention significantly improved psychological flexibility and significantly reduced social media addiction levels. BSMAS post-intervention scores findings showed a significant difference between the experimental and control groups (M = 11.25 vs. 19.08, t(22) = 6.51, p <.001, Cohen’s d = 2.77), indicating a beneficial outcome for the experimental group. The findings demonstrate the efficacy of ACT-based intervention in reducing social media addiction and enhancing psychological flexibility among nursing students.