The relationship between social media addiction, social appearance anxiety, and alexithymia in adolescents

Increasing use of social media today has also revealed the risk of social media addiction among adolescents. Although there are studies on the level and effects of social media addiction with adolescents, studies dealing with its relationship with social appearance anxiety or alexithymia are limited.This study was conducted to determine the relationship between social media addiction, social appearance anxiety and alexithymia in adolescents. The sample of this correlational, cross-sectional study consisted of 756 adolescents in the 15-17 age group. In the study, after obtaining institutional permission, ethics committee permission and participant consent, the data were collected by using the Introductory Information Form prepared by the researchers, Social Media Addiction Scale for Adolescents (SMASA), Toronto Alexithymia Scale-20 (TAS-20), and Social Appearance Anxiety Scale (SAAS). In the data analysis, descriptive statistical analyzes "Mann Whitney U Test", "Kruskal Wallis H Test", "Dunn-Bonferroni Test" and correlation and regression analyzes were used. It was determined that the mean age of the adolescents included in the study was 16.04±0.74, 57.8% of them were girls. Social Media Addiction Scale for Adolescents mean score was 22.35±7.68; The mean score of the Social Appearance Anxiety scale was 39.63±15.09, and the total mean score of the Toronto Alexithymia scale was 52.38±8.78. A moderate positive correlation was found between the Social Media Addiction scale for adolescents and the Social Appearance Anxiety scale (p<0.05). A moderately positive correlation was determined between Toronto Alexithymia scale total score and Social Appearance Anxiety and Social Media Addiction Scale for Adolescents (p<0.05). Social Media Addiction Scale for Adolescents and Social Appearance Anxiety scores were found to be effective on Toronto Alexithymia scale scores (p<0.05). In line with the findings of the study, it is recommended that pediatric nurses conduct training, counseling and intervention studies for adolescents and their families in order to raise awareness about social media addiction and its effects.