The mediating role of perceived social support level in the relationship between smartphone addiction and social anxiety in high school students

The purpose of this study is to examine the mediating role of perceived social support level in the relationship between smartphone addiction and social anxiety. The sample of the study consists of a total of 443 high school students, 249 girls and 194 boys. In this study; Personal Information Form, Smartphone Addiction Scale Short Form, Social Anxiety Scale for Adolescents and Perceived Social Support Scale-R were applied. All of the data obtained was analyzed by transferring it to the SPSS 26.0 package statistics program. Pearson product-moment correlation coefficients were calculated to investigate the relationships between smartphone addiction, social anxiety and perceived social support levels. Independent Groups t-test and One-Way Analysis of Variance (ANOVA) were conducted to examine whether the research variables differed according to demographic variables. Analysis of the mediating variable was performed with PROCESS Macro 4.3. According to the results of the research, positive significant relationships were found between smartphone addiction and social anxiety, and negative significant relationships were found between perceived social support and social anxiety. Negatively significant results were obtained between smartphone addiction and family support and teacher support, which are the sub-dimensions of perceived social support. There are positive relationships between smartphone addiction and all sub-dimensions of social anxiety. When the relationship between perceived social support and social anxiety sub-dimensions was considered, it was determined that all sub-dimensions of social anxiety had negative significant results with the family support and friend support sub-dimensions of perceived social support. No mediating effect of perceived social support was found in the relationship between smartphone addiction and social anxiety levels. In addition, the variables of the study were examined in terms of gender, grade level, number of siblings, grade point average, and whether the parents were together or not. The research results were discussed in accordance with the literature and suggestions were presented.