Investigation of the relationship between physical activity, screen addiction and peer relationship in secondary school students

This study aimed to examine the relationships between physical activity, screen addiction, and peer relationships using a relational survey model. A total of 516 middle school students voluntarily participated in the study, consisting of an equal number of females (n=258; 50%) and males (n=258; 50%), with a mean age of X̄ age = 12.34 ± 0.92 and X̄ age = 12.38 ± 0.98, respectively. The data were collected using the "Physical Activity Scale", "Peer Relationships Scale for Adolescents", "Multiple Screen Addiction Scale", and a "Personal Information Form" developed by there searchers. Toassess the normality assumptions, the Kolmogorov-Smirnov test was conducted, and skew ness and kurtosis values were examined, confirming that the data met the normality criteria. To analyze gender based differences in physical activity, screen addiction, and peer relationships, the Independent Samples T-Test was applied. Additionally, differences between groups based on income and parentaleducationlevelswereexaminedusingOne-Way ANOVA, followedby Post-Hoc Tukeyteststoidentifythesources of significantdifferences. TherelationshipsbetweenvariableswereassessedusingPearson's Product-Moment Correlation Analysis. Furthermore, ConfirmatoryFactor Analysis (CFA) wasconductedto test thevalidity of thescaleamongmiddleschoolstudents, andtheresultsindicatedacceptable fit indices.Findingsrevealedstatisticallysignificantdifferences in physicalactivityscoresbased on gender, incomelevel, andparentaleducationlevel. Interms of total screenaddictionscores, nosignificantdifferenceswereobservedconcerningincomelevel, gender, orfather'seducationlevel; however, a statistically significant difference was found regarding mother'seducation level, though the effect size was negligible. Regarding peer relationships cores, significant differences were identified based on gender and in come level, whilenosignificantdifferenceswerefoundforparentaleducationlevels.Theresultsindicated a weakpositivecorrelationbetweenphysicalactivityandpeerrelationships, whereas a weaknegativecorrelationwasobservedbetweenscreenaddictionandpeerrelationships. However, nosignificantrelationshipwasfoundbetweenphysicalactivityandscreenaddiction. Given the weak associations among the variables, the finding ssuggest a limited interaction between these factors. Keywords:Multiple Screen Addiction;Peer Relationship for Adolescents;Physical Activity