Social Media Addiction: A Study On High School And University Students

Addiction is different than habit ,It is a condition that affects person's life either materially or spiritually, which may result in aggression, and disturbing the person’s life in case of being away from the phenomenon or object that the person is connected. Addiction has become widespread in many individuals, especially among young people, and has reached dangerous dimensions. Internet which is one of the greatest developments of the age that we are living, and because of that improvement social media became more popular. Addiction has started to show itself on social media. Social media; is an internet portal where people can create digital contents from photos, videos or articles and share their ideas freely. Social media addiction is a type of behavioral addiction that results in excessive use. Social media addiction has been identified as the subject of research due to the small number of studies in the literature and the fact that there is a new type of addiction. The purpose of the research is to measure the level of social media addiction and determine their differences according to demographic characteristics. For this purpose, 15 demographic and 41 5 likert scale questions were asking to 309 high school and university students. The obtained data were subjected to the necessary tests through the SPSS 20 statistical program. Based on the results of the test, the level of social media addiction has increased and according to usage purposes, it has been changed.