The relationship between communication competence, loneliness and social desirability with social media addiction

In this study, which aims to examine social media addiction in terms of communication competence, loneliness and social liking variables, the relational survey method was used. Another aim is to examine whether social media addiction shows a significant difference according to gender, faculty and relationship status. The sample of the study consists of a total of 540 university students studying in different faculties in the 2023-2024 academic year. In the study, "Personal Information Form" created by the researchers was used to collect data on the personal information of the participants, "Social Media Addiction Scale" was used to examine their social media addiction, "Interpersonal Communication Competence Inventory (ICCI)" was used to examine their communication competence, "UCLA Loneliness Scale" was used to examine their loneliness, and "Social Liking Scale" was used to examine their social liking. The necessary permissions for the research were obtained from the Ethics Committee of Kırşehir Ahi Evran University and the rectorate of Çankırı Karatekin University, where the research was conducted, and from each faculty where the application would be carried out. IBM SPSS 26 package program was used in data analysis. The data obtained in the study were analyzed by t test, ANOVA, levene test, tukey test, pearson product-moment correlation analysis and multiple linear regression analysis. One-way analysis of variance (ANOVA) was applied to determine whether social media addiction in university students showed a significant difference according to gender; one-way analysis of variance (ANOVA) was applied to determine whether it showed a significant difference according to faculty and relationship status variables. Multiple regression analysis was used to determine whether communication competence, loneliness and social liking, which are the other independent variables in the study, predict social media addiction in university students. As a result of the analysis, it was concluded that the social media addiction of university students showed a significant difference in terms of gender and relationship status, but did not show a significant difference in terms of faculty. According to the multiple regression analysis, the strongest predictor variable was social likability, followed by communication competence. The loneliness variable is not a significant predictor. In addition, communication competence, loneliness and social liking factors explain 33% of the total variance of social media addiction. Keywords: Communication competence, social likeability, social media addiction, university students, loneliness