The effects of social media phenomena on high school students: the case of Uşak

The main purpose of this research is to examine what effect social media and social media phenomena have on high school students. In this period where technology is rapidly developing, everything has become digital and technology has started to take an important place in our lives. So much so that many social media sites have emerged and people have started to spend most of their days on these sites with the profiles they create. With the increase in the use of social media, people with a large number of followers or names that are highly liked have become known to everyone on social media and are called phenomena. Everyone who uses social media follows the influencers they see close to them or like. It was aimed to determine which social media influencers and on which social platforms the target audience of the research, high school students, follow the most. It has been investigated how the phenomena that high school students follow affect their social lives such as family relationships, friend relationships, and daily lives. This study is a descriptive survey model in accordance with the quantitative research approach. The research data was obtained by survey technique. For this research, a total of 400 students, 200 female and 200 male students, were reached in high schools determined by simple random sampling in Uşak Province. The data obtained was analysed using the SPSS program. Chi-square test was used to measure whether there was a significant relationship between variables for the research problems. The significance level was evaluated considering the p<0,05 value. Finally, the research results were interpreted by evaluating the relationships between the variables and the study was concluded. Key Words: Social Media, Social Media Phenomenon, High School Students, Youth