The mediating role of perceived social support and loneliness in the relationship between cognitive flexibility and social media addiction in adolescents

The purpose of this study is to examine the mediating role of perceived social support and loneliness in the relationship between cognitive flexibility and social media addiction among adolescents. The sample of the study consists of a total of 461 students, including 366 females and 95 males, studying in the 9th, 10th, 11th, and 12th grades of high schools affiliated with the Ministry of National Education in the Ergani district of Diyarbakır province. The data for the study were collected using the "Personal Information Form" created by the researcher, the "Cognitive Flexibility Scale," the "Social Media Addiction Scale for Adolescents," the "Ucla Loneliness Scale- Short Form," and the "Multidimensional Scale of Perceived Social Support - Revised Form." Various simple and multiple regression analyses were performed to determine whether cognitive flexibility, loneliness, and perceived social support predict social media addiction, and to identify the mediating effect of loneliness and perceived social support in the relationship between cognitive flexibility and social media addiction. The significance of the change in regression coefficients indicating the presence of a mediating effect was examined using the bootstrapping method. According to the results obtained from the study, cognitive flexibility showed significant negative relationship with social media addiction and loneliness, while it showed significant positive relationship with perceived social support. Social media addiction showed a significant negative relationship with perceived social support. Loneliness showed a significant positive relationship with social media addiction and a significant negative relationship with perceived social support. It was found that social media addiction is significantly predicted by the predictor variables cognitive flexibility and loneliness. It was found that loneliness plays a partial mediating role in the relationship between cognitive flexibility and social media addiction, while perceived social support does not have a partial mediating role. Keywords: Social media addiction, cognitive flexibility, perceived social support, loneliness