Investigation of the relationship between adult individuals' social media addiction and psychological symptom levels

The main purpose of this study is to examine the power of some psychological symptom levels and daily social media usage time to predict social media addiction in adolescents. For this purpose, standard and stepwise multiple linear regression analysis was conducted to test whether social media addiction predicts somatization, obsessive-compulsive disorder, interpersonal sensitivity, depression, anxiety disorder, hostility, phobic anxiety, paranoid and psychotic psychological disorder symptoms. The sample group of the study consists of 351 participants. Personal Information Form, Social Media Addiction Scale-Adult Form and Brief Symptom Inventory were used to collect the research data. According to the findings obtained in the study, it was seen that social media addiction predicts psychological disorders. The variables that show the highest relationship with social media addiction were determined as psychoticism, paranoid thoughts and phobic anxiety. According to the obtained data, the variable that has the most effect on social media addiction is the number of social media presence. There is a positive and high relationship between social media addiction and daily social media presence. As the number of daily social media presence increases, the level of social media addiction increases. As a result, there is a relationship between psychological symptoms experienced by adults and social media addiction. The increase in the level of psychological discomfort symptoms of adults is effective in increasing social media addiction. Psychological disorders also affect the increase in the time spent on social media. The obtained data were discussed with the findings obtained in similar studies in the literature and some suggestions were made.