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Today’s society interest in mobile photography drives consumers’ and brands’ growing usage of Instagram. This paper aims to address the consequences of excessive use of Instagram on the negative feeling of losing information when not connected and the emotional fatigue resulting from an overcharge with new information. The mediating role of addiction between Instagram overuse and the two outcomes is also analyzed.

Data from 342 active Instagram users were used to test the proposed model, applying the partial least square equation modeling method (SmartPLS 3).

Addiction partially mediates the impact of overuse on emotional fatigue and instastress. Addiction to Instagram was mainly due to respondents’ lack of control over the time spent on it resulting in incapability to reduce its usage.

Social networking site managers, educators, families and public institutions should promote an adequate use of Instagram, making users (especially the young) aware of the potential threats of its excessive usage. The control on the amount of time devoted to Instagram is a key factor for detaining overuse and addiction, as well as avoiding the negative outcomes analyzed in this research.

The findings contribute to the extant knowledge on the negative side of the digitization of the individual, as little is known about it to the best of the authors’ knowledge.

La presente investigación aborda las consecuencias del uso excesivo de Instagram relacionadas con el sentimiento negativo de pérdida de información, cuando no se está conectado, y la fatiga emocional derivada de la sobrecarga de información. El estudio también analiza el papel mediador de la adicción entre el uso excesivo de Instagram y ambas consecuencias.

Para testar el modelo propuesto se utilizó información de 342 usuarios activos de Instagram, aplicándose el método de ecuaciones estructurales por mínimos cuadrados parciales (SmartPLS 3).

La adicción media parcialmente el impacto que el uso excesivo de Instagram tiene sobre (i) la fatiga emocional y (ii) el Instastress. La adicción a Instagram se deriva principalmente de la falta de control del tiempo invertido en su uso, lo que da como resultado su incapacidad para reducir dicho uso.

Los responsables de los medios sociales, los educadores, las familias y las instituciones públicas deberían promover un uso adecuado de Instagram, haciendo que los usuarios (especialmente los más jóvenes) sean conscientes de las amenazas potenciales de su uso excesivo. El control sobre la cantidad de tiempo dedicado a Instagram es un factor clave para detener el uso excesivo y la adicción, así como para evitar los resultados negativos analizados en esta investigación.

Los resultados contribuyen a ampliar el conocimiento sobre el lado negativo de la digitalización del individuo, dada la escasa literatura al respecto.

Adicción, Uso excesivo, Instastress, Fatiga emocional, Redes sociales, Instagram

Artículo de investigación

Massive open online courses (MOOCs) have been gaining popularity as non-formal lifelong learning educational platforms. However, they have been criticized for their low completion rate and low ability for networking. The purpose of this paper is to analyze how incorporating entrepreneurial competencies in MOOCs develops attributes of educational innovation and collaborative projects.

The research followed a three-stage process: in first stage, a comprehensive literature review was conducted to identify dimensions of entrepreneurial skills and attributes of educational innovation in MOOCs. In the second stage, a quantitative study was carried out, based on the analysis of pre- and post-test surveys taken by a sample of 6,517 participants. In the last stage, the interaction analysis model/computer-mediated communication analysis model was applied through qualitative analysis, using the MAXQDA tool to identify if entrepreneurship opportunities were generated in the interactions within the discussion forums of the MOOCs.

The results show that the analyzed MOOCs have an overall completion rate of 12.55 per cent, above the average of the rates found in the literature review. However, only 14.29 per cent of the participants expressed at least one opportunity to generate ventures related to the topics of energy in the discussion forums.

This research could help instructional designers and universities to consider the inclusion of entrepreneurship issues in the design of MOOCs’ content and to encourage more activities that promote networking among participants, to identify business potential from the educational materials.

This research is one of the very few studies on entrepreneurship competencies in MOOCs to understand how the inclusion of issues related to entrepreneurship in MOOCs can generate a positive impact on participants.

This study aimed to develop the Thai gaming disorder scale (T-GDS) in children and adolescents to serve medical staff and investigate the effectiveness of the scale.

This is a research and development study. In total, 217 participants were children and adolescents between 8–18 years, then classified into four groups according to Children's Global Assessment Scale (CGAS). The T-GDS was developed; its content validity was then investigated by three experts. Mock assessment was conducted on 15 individuals replicating the actual sample group before the assessment was tested on the sample group by two medical staff. The quality of the scale is assessed through reliability, validity and cut-off point analysis.

Exploratory factor analysis (EFA) extracted four components with 18 items meeting the criteria and have Cronbach's alpha of 0.95. The analysis of ROC curve, to determine the cut-off point, associated the mild game addiction group with T-GDS score = 14; moderate group score = 28; and severe group score = 42.

Investigation of cut-off point by practitioners is vital to compare whether it aligns with the point determined by doctors in game addiction diagnosis. Future research should select critical item in order to reduce the number of questions and construct validity should be examined using confirmatory factor analysis.

This paper provides a comprehensive insight regarding severity of game addiction based on related criteria. As a result, treatment appropriate for each type of severity could be enhanced.

People seem to function according to different models, which implies that in business and social sciences, heterogeneity is a rule rather than an exception. Researchers can investigate such heterogeneity through multigroup analysis (MGA). In the context of partial least squares path modeling (PLS-PM), MGA is currently applied to perform multiple comparisons of parameters across groups. However, this approach has significant drawbacks: first, the whole model is not considered when comparing groups, and second, the family-wise error rate is higher than the predefined significance level when the groups are indeed homogenous, leading to incorrect conclusions. Against this background, the purpose of this paper is to present and validate new MGA tests, which are applicable in the context of PLS-PM, and to compare their efficacy to existing approaches.

The authors propose two tests that adopt the squared Euclidean distance and the geodesic distance to compare the model-implied indicator correlation matrix across groups. The authors employ permutation to obtain the corresponding reference distribution to draw statistical inference about group differences. A Monte Carlo simulation provides insights into the sensitivity and specificity of both permutation tests and their performance, in comparison to existing approaches.

Both proposed tests provide a considerable degree of statistical power. However, the test based on the geodesic distance outperforms the test based on the squared Euclidean distance in this regard. Moreover, both proposed tests lead to rejection rates close to the predefined significance level in the case of no group differences. Hence, our proposed tests are more reliable than an uncontrolled repeated comparison approach.

Current guidelines on MGA in the context of PLS-PM should be extended by applying the proposed tests in an early phase of the analysis. Beyond our initial insights, more research is required to assess the performance of the proposed tests in different situations.

This paper contributes to the existing PLS-PM literature by proposing two new tests to assess multigroup differences. For the first time, this allows researchers to statistically compare a whole model across groups by applying a single statistical test.

Betting games have become a global industry worth billions of dollars providing employment to millions and contributing to the gross domestic product (GDP) of several countries. While there are debates and controversies surrounding betting games discourse, a growing body of literature shows that it has been exacerbated by growing unemployment rates. This paper aims to examine the nexus between the increasing involvement of youth in betting games and unemployment from the Nigerian perspective.

The study adopts simple random and stratified sampling techniques to select participants for the study. Three hypotheses were tested for this study and confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) and structural equation model (SEM) was used to test the hypotheses.

The three hypotheses tested in this study were coined from previous literature. The study established a direct link between technology advancement, promises of winning big coupled with bonuses while unemployment was not significant to youth involvement in betting games. The study also showed that playing betting games provides another source of income to the youth, who are already engaged in one form of work or another. Finally, youth involvement in betting games has created awareness regarding different sports in the world, while contributing to Nigeria’s economy.

As betting games centre as a business in Nigeria has contributed substantially and positively to unemployment in Nigeria; the Government of Nigeria are encouraged to streamline and regulate the activities of the sector such that they can contribute significantly to the country GDP and provide employment opportunities to the youths.

The research shows that the reason why betting games have a massive turnaround of youths in Nigeria is not majorly because of unemployment but as another means to a substantial financial individual/family income. Thus, Nigerian youths see betting games as an avenue to make more money. The study is the first of its kind to examine the nexus between betting games, technology and unemployment hence, its contribution to knowledge.