The purpose of the study was to test the moderating role of self-control in the relationship between daily stress and online social networking addiction of adolescents.

The daily stress scale, online social networking addiction scale, and self-control scale were administered to a sample of 225 adolescents. The data were analyzed using SPSS 25.0 and SPSS PROCESS macro.

The results were as follows: First, correlation analysis was conducted to examine the relationship among daily stress, self-control, and online social networking addiction. Daily stress was significantly positively correlated with online social networking addiction. In contrast, self-control was significantly negatively correlated with daily stress. Second, the interaction between self-control and daily stress played a more prominent role in protecting against online social networking addiction in adolescents who reported lower daily stress than those who reported higher daily stress.

This result suggested that it is necessary to strengthen the positive aspects of self-control to adolescents who have difficulty managing their online social networking addiction.