Antecedents of social media addiction and cyberbullying among adolescents: Attachment, the dark triad, rejection sensitivity and friendship quality

With the acceleration of internet use, social media addiction is included in our lives. When looking at the antecedents of SMA, being young has been found to be a risk factor for SMA. It is more important to investigate the effects of SMA on adolescents because, in addition to being in the risk group, adolescents adopt the latest technologies more easily and they are vulnerable to the negative effects of these technologies. The internet is not always used for "innocent" purposes such as self-entertainment or getting information; sometimes it can also be used for malicious purposes, such as humiliating or bullying others. In addition to the benefits of technological advances in education and training, rapid technological developments may also result in problematic behaviors especially among children and young and recently, possibilities brought by technology and more widespread use of technology by young people have created a new concept, namely, cyberbullying, which expands the concept of traditional bullying and that includes using technology for bullying others. The aim of the present study is to examine the effects of attachment anxiety and attachment avoidance on SMA and cyberbullying as distal outcome variables and partial mediating effects of the Dark Triad (DT) personality traits, angry rejection sensitivity (RS) and anxious RS, and friendship quality in the links of attachment anxiety and avoidance among adolescences. In general, the findings supported the proposed theoretical model. The findings revealed that attachment anxiety was found to be a significant predictor of SMA among adolescent sample. The effect of attachment anxiety on cyberbullying was found to be insignificant. However, angry RS and anxious RS mediated the link between attachment anxiety and cyberbullying. Angry and anxious RS also fully mediated the link between attachment anxiety and friendship quality. The association between attachment avoidance and cyberbullying was mediated by psychopathy. Machiavellianism and psychopathy partially mediated the link between attachment avoidance and friendship quality. The results are discussed in terms of theoretical and practical implications along with suggestions for future research.