Evaluation of the relationship between social media addiction, cyberbullying and subjective well-being in high school students

The usage of social media applications is increasing, which are widely used among young people and their addictive effects also increased. The communication established through social media, the concepts of being a bully and a victim have also been transferred to the digital environment. Subjective wellbeing plays an important role in bully and victim behavior. We aimed in the study to investigate the relationship between social media addiction, cyberbullying and subjective well-being in high school students between the ages of 14-18. We distributed the "Adolescent Social Media Addiction Scale, Cyber Bullying Scale, Adolescent Subjective Well-Being Scale and the Sociodemographic Data Form prepared by us, to high school students between the ages of 14-18 in selected schools in the provincial sample. In the study initiated after the approvals of the Provincial Directorate of National Education and the ethics committee, the consent of the participants and their parents was obtained. We distributed the forms to a total of 450 high school students, and the scales of 295 participants who agreed to participate in the study and filled them out completely were evaluated. The found that 64.4% of the participants were female, and the average age was 16,15 ± 1,03 (min.–max. 14,10-18,7). As social media addiction increases, subjective well-being decreases, and this relationship is bidirectional. As subjective well-being increases, social media addiction decreases. A significant relationship was observed between adolescent subjective well-being and social media addiction (r=-0,143, p=0,01). It was found that as social media addiction increased, cyber victimization, cyber bullying and witnessing cyber bullying increased. We found that cyber victimization influences subjective well-being. As cyber victimization increases, subjective well-being decreases. It was found that cyber bullying and witnessing cyber bullying did not affect subjective well-being in adolescents. We revealed that social media addiction in high school students negatively affects adolescent subjective well-being and increases the risk of cyber bullying, victimization and witnessing. Especially when social media use has become quite widespread among young people, it is important to determine risk factors and risk groups. Preventive initiatives of social media addiction in adolescents will be helping to decrease the risk of addictive usage of social media such as cyberbullying and improve adolescent subjective well-being.