Internet addiction, perceived social support, loneliness and psychological symptom levels of adolescents: A research on testing different structural models

In this study, the relationships between adolescents' internet addiction levels, perceived family social support, loneliness and psychological symptoms were examined. The study was carried out with the participation of 2047 adolescents attending different high school types in Siirt City. Young Internet Addiction Scale Short Form, Multidimensional Perceived Social Support Scale, UCLA Loneliness Scale Short Form and Brief Symptom Inventory were used as measurement tools. In the study, data analysis were done using descriptive statistical analysis, multivariate normality tests and structural equation modeling methods. In addition, bootstrapping process was used to test the significance of the indirect effect of the models. After the different structural equality models tested in the research, it was observed that the model, which states that psychological symptoms have a partial mediating role between perceived family social support and internet addiction, and the full mediating role between loneliness and internet addiction, is the best structural equation model. After the bootstrapping process, it was seen that all indirect effects in the model were significant. The effect of some demographic variables on adolescents' internet addiction was also examined in the study. According to the findings, being male in terms of gender variable, having social media membership, low perceived academic achievement level, high daily internet usage time and the tool used when entering the internet is a tablet were found to have significant effects on adolescents' levels of internet addiction.