Background: Social media plays a crucial role in our daily lives, especially among university students. The global social media platforms and the easy access to the Internet bring about the potential for social media addiction. The concept of social media addiction is a rising problem that affects Egyptian university students physically, psychologically, socially,
and mentally. Aim of the study: Explore the relation between social media addiction and health promoting lifestyle among students of medical and non-medical colleges. Subjects and Methods; Design: A cross-sectional analytic research design was carried out in this study. Setting: The present study was conducted at four colleges at Zagazig University.
Nursing and pharmacy colleges represented medical colleges, education and commerce colleges represented non-medical colleges. Subjects: A stratified multi-stage sample was selected from medical and non-medical colleges (n= 480). Tool of data collection: Three tools were used for collecting data. Tool (I): Self-administered questionnaire. Tool (II): Social
Media Addiction Scale-Student Form (SMAS-SF). Tool (III): Health Promoting Lifestyle Profile (HPLP-II) questionnaire. Results: 50.4% of non-medical students have a high total social media addiction compared to 37.9% of medical students. On the other hand, 77.5% of students from medical colleges have a higher total health promoting lifestyle compared to
66.2% of students from non-medical colleges. Conclusion: There was a statistically significant relation between virtual tolerance, virtual problems and health promoting lifestyle. More than one third of the study sample who was characterized by high virtual tolerance and problems had a low health promoting lifestyle. Recommendations: Design and implement preventive programs regarding optimal use of social media platforms. Moreover, conducting health education programs that address appropriate approaches of health promoting lifestyle.