The investigation of the effects of connection to parents on smartphone addiction and the mediating role of emotion regulation in adolescents aged 15-18

In this thesis, it was aimed to examine the relationship between attachment to parents, emotion regulation and smartphone addiction in adolescents aged 15-18 and the mediating role of emotion regulation in this relationship. The correlational scanning model, one of the quantitative research methods, was used in the thesis study. The sample of the study consists of 380 high school students, 175 of whom are girls and 205 are boys, in the 15-18 age range. Demographic data form, Smartphone Addiction Scale, Emotion Regulation Difficulty-Short Form and Parent Attachment Scale-Short Form were used as data collection tools. As a result of the analysis, it was determined that there was a relationship between parent attachment style, smartphone addiction and emotion regulation in adolescents in middle adolescence. It was observed that this relationship differs according to sociodemographic variables such as gender, age and academic success. Smartphone addiction was found to have a partial mediating effect on the prediction of difficulty in emotion regulation of attachment to parents. Attachment, which is extremely critical in terms of human mental health, was found to be associated with adolescents' emotional regulation levels and smartphone addiction levels. Due to the limited number of studies conducted with a sample in the middle adolescence period, this study is thought to be important in understanding the reason for the relationship between parents' attachment style, smartphone addiction and emotion regulation variables and will provide up-to-date information to the literature