Investigation of the relationship between social media attitudes, self-esteem and academic self-confidence of 7th and 8th grade students

Today, increasing digitalization and the virtual world are rapidly attracting young people, especially their attitudes towards social media become an important element that shapes their self-esteem and academic self-confidence. Based on this idea, the aim of the study is to examine the relationship between social media attitudes, self-esteem and academic self-confidence of students studying at secondary school during adolescence, when efforts to create an identity are intense. The universe of the research consists of a secondary school affiliated to the Ministry of National Education in the Sancaktepe district, and the sample consists of 230 7th and 8th grade students selected by simple random sampling method from this population. The research is a quantitative research and was carried out with a correlational survey model. As data collection tools in the research, Social Media Attitude Scale (SMAS) developed by Otrar and Argın, Rosenberg Self-Esteem Scale (RSES) adapted to Turkish by Çuhadaroğlu and Academic Self-Confidence Scale (ASCS) prepared by Kalkan, Bakioğlu and Toprak, and personal information form prepared by the researcher was used. For the analysis of the data, IBM SPSS Statistics 22 (SPSS Inc., Chicago, IL) program was used. With the scales used in the study, Independent Sample T Test was used for two-group comparisons in demographic comparisons, and One-Way Analysis of Variance (ANOVA) analysis was used for more than two-group comparisons. In addition, Pearson Correlation analysis was used to determine whether there was a relationship between quantitative variables, and regression analysis to determine whether the scale scores predicted each other. According to the research findings; it has been determined that social media attitude and academic self-confidence are effective on self-esteem and contribute to the model at a significance level of 0.05. In the model; while the other variable is constant, one unit of increase in social media attitude causes an increase of 0.018 units above self-esteem, that is, it represents low self-esteem; it can be said that a one-unit increase in academic self-confidence causes a 0.017-unit decrease in self-esteem, that is, it represents high self-esteem. However, the total score of academic self-confidence (p=0.001<0.05) and social media attitude total score (p=0.011<0.05) differed in favor of 7th graders; Variables such as gender, father's educational status and father's marital status were not determinative for adolescents' self-esteem, academic self-confidence and social media attitude (p=>0.05), but mother's marital status and mother's educational status were found to be effective on adolescent self-esteem (p=<0.05) results have been achieved.