Investigation of the relationship between social media addiction level and basic psychological needs: Astudy on university students

According to internet usage statistics; the number of internet users around the world is increasing day by day. More than half of the internet users, most of whom are young population defined as Generation Y and Z, also use a social media account. The majority of these are internet users, whose young population is defined as Generation Y and Z. More than half of these users also use a social media account. People's use of social media can be healthy or in addiction level. The rapid increase in the use of social media applications in the last decade has brought concerns about these applications causing addiction. In the literature, social media addiction considered as one of the problematic internet use, is defined as being overly fond of social media, having a strong desire to use social media, or a desire to log on social media with an uncontrollable strong motivation. In the same breath, the time that a person spends on this activity is defined as disrupting his other social activities, working life, and interpersonal relationships. The position of the person on whether he uses social media in a healthy or addictive manner depends on the needs he tries to meet with his social media use and how social media meets these needs. For this reason, the motivation and psychological satisfaction that drives people to be overly addicted to social media draws the attention of researchers. In this study, the relationship between the social media addiction level of university students in the age group with a high rate of internet use and the level of meeting their basic psychological needs was examined. In order to collect research data, a total of 508 undergraduate students (178 girls and 330 boys) studying at the university were selected as the sample. Primary data were collected from the research sample using the survey technique, one of the quantitative research methods. The data obtained with "Social Media Addiction Scale-Adult Form", "University Students Basic Needs Scale" and "Personal Information Form" were analyzed with SPSS 22.0 program. In research, social media addiction is discussed together with its virtual tolerance and virtual communication sub-dimensions. According to the results of the research, it was found that 17.9% of the university students are social media addicts. The social media addiction level of all participants was found to be medium (2.84). The virtual communication sub-dimension of social media addiction was the variable with a higher average compared to the virtual tolerance sub-dimension. University students mostly use portable devices to access social media. Looking at the students' daily use of social media; it is seen that 48% of them use social media between 1-3 hours a day, 36% between 4-6 hours a day, and 8.7% use social media for 7 hours or more a day. Their social media usage is mostly in the evening and at night. During the COVID-19 process, 83% of the students experienced a significant increase in their social media usage time and this caused an increase in their addiction level. Social media addiction differ according to gender, age, number of siblings, class level of education, time of daily use of social media, duration of daily use, and the duration of COVID-19 process. These data on the social media addiction rates of university students indicate that they need aid intervention.The basic psychological needs which are the independent variables of the research have been handled in four dimensions: love-belonging, fun, power and freedom. University students generally think that their psychological needs are adequately met. While the psychological need met at the highest rate was the need for love and belonging, the least met psychological need was the need for power and freedom. The level of meeting basic psychological needs varies according to the monthly total income of the family, the monthly disposable income of the students (pocket money, etc.), age, number of siblings, age order among the siblings, class of education, time of day use of social media and daily usage time. Considering the relationship between social media addiction, which is the main subject of the study, and the level of satisfaction of basic psychological needs, it is seen that there is a negative and low-grade relationship between these two variables. While meeting some basic psychological needs sufficiently decreases social media addiction, not meeting them enough increases social media addiction.