Development of a psychoeducational program to prevent social media addiction in adolescents and testing its effectiveness

Addiction, in recent years, has become a problem of individuals' mental, physical, academic, professional, social, etc. It has become an important problem that deeply affects life in many areas. There are many types of addiction, and one of the most common is undoubtedly the addiction to social media platforms. Adolescents, who are at the most important stage of identity construction, have to successfully accomplish many developmental tasks during their developmental period and prepare for the future in a healthy way. Excessive use of social media at this stage has profound effects on the adolescent's healthy identity construction. Excessive use of social media in adolescents causes loss of function in many areas and creates a predisposition to mental disorders in the future. In this study, the effectiveness of the psychoeducation program developed by the researcher to prevent social media addiction in adolescents was tested. An experimental design with pretest, posttest, follow-up test and control group was used in the study. Before the psychoeducation started, the researcher developed a Psychoeducation Program for Preventing Social Media Addiction in Adolescents, consisting of ten sessions. Then, the Social Media Addiction Scale for Adolescents (SMASA) was applied to 9th grade students studying in a high school in Çukurova District of Adana Province in the 2023/2024 academic year. According to the results of the scale application, 30 students with the highest social media addiction level were determined. Of these students, 15 were assigned to the experimental group and 15 to the control group, with similar arithmetic means and standard deviations. A psychoeducation program consisting of ten sessions was applied to the students in the experimental group. No study was conducted on the students in the control group. The content of the psychoeducational study includes self-awareness, expressing emotions, increasing self-esteem and gaining a positive self-image, maintaining self-control, coping with negative emotions and managing stress, goal setting, time management and healthy alternative activity planning, problem-solving skills, taking responsibilities of life, friendship skills and conscious internet use. At the end of the training, the Social Media Addiction Scale for Adolescents (SMASA) was re-administered to the students in both groups. The results show that the social media addiction levels of the students in the experimental group decreased significantly compared to the students in the control group. To determine whether the gains from the training were permanent or not, the scale was re-applied to the students in the experimental group one month after the training. The results showed that the gains were permanent even after training. In the study, parametric statistical methods Independent Sample t-test and Paired Sample t-test were used for normally distributed data, and Wilcoxon Signed Rank Test, one of the non-parametric statistical methods, was used for non-normally distributed data. The results were discussed with the relevant literature. It is thought that the study will contribute to preventive studies to combat addictions.