The effect of the psychoeducation program aimed at increasing emotion regulation skills on the level of the social media addiction among the adolescents

The main purpose of the current study was to explore the impact of prepared psycho-educational program which aims increase emotional regulation skills of adolescents on social media addiction. The data was collected from a total of 486 volunteer students consisting of 9th, 10th and 11th grade students studying in an Anatolian High School located in Kocaeli province Başiskele district in Turkey in the 2021-2022 academic years. In order to determine the study group Turkish version of social media addiction scale short form for adolescents and emotion regulation scale were used. 39 students selected for study group scored 5 points or more from the social media addiction short form scale for adolescents, scored below the average in the reappraisal emotion regulation skill, and scored above the average in the suppression subscales of the emotion regulation scale. After that among 39 students 30 students were randomly selected to participated the study. Then selected participants were randomly assigned to the research groups (experimental, n= 15; control, n= 15). 2x3 (experimental/control groups X pretest/posttest/follow-up test) split plot design was used in the study. According to the findings of study, the prepared psycho-educational program significantly increased reappraisal emotion regulation skill and decreased suppression emotional regulation skill of adolescents in experimental group, former is functional while latter is dysfunctional. The main findings of the study demonstrated that psycho-education program significantly decrease the social media addiction level of adolescents in the experiment group through increasing functional emotion regulation skills. The findings also showed that there was a significant favorable difference in pre-test, post-test, and follow-up test scores of participants in experiment group both in social media addiction and functional emotion regulation skills (increase in reappraisal and decrease in suppression). This difference was not observed in the scores of participants in control group. Keywords: Addiction, Behavior Addiction, Social Media Addiction, Emotion Regulation Skill