Predictive relationships between social media addiction and quest for significance of adolescents

Quest for significance is the desire of individuals to feel themselves important and valuable, to feel that they are important and valuable in the eyes of others, and to be loved, respected and recognized in their group. This need must be triggered for an individual to engage in quest for significance. Quest for significance is activated in three ways: a sense of loss of current significance, a threat of losing significance and an incentive to gain significance. Adolescents in the process of identity development prefer to be in environments where they are important, valued, loved and respected. Social media, where they express themselves more easily, is a platform that adolescents turn to in order to meet these needs. The adolescent satisfies his/her activated quest for significance during the time he/she is on social media and social media addiction may emerge with the increase in this period. The purpose of this study is to determine the predictive relationships between adolescents' social media addictions and their quest for significance. A total of 607 adolescents (378 female and 229 male) attending high school participated in the study. Relational survey method, one of the quantitative research methods, was used. Social Media Addiction Scale, Significance Quest Scale and Personal Information Form were used as data collection tools. In the analysis of the data, t-test was used to test whether the difference between the means of two unrelated samples was significant, and one-way analysis of variance (ANOVA) was used to test whether the difference between the sample means of more than two groups was significant. In addition, the relationship between the independent variable of the study, social media addiction, and the dependent variable, quest for significance, was examined by simple linear regression. As a result of the research, a significant difference was found in the quest for significance of adolescents according to gender, family income level, parental marital status, perceived academic achievement and time spent on social media. In addition, no significant difference was found in quest for significance according to grade level, perceived mother's attitude, perceived father's attitude and social media usage purposes. A significant and positive moderate relationship was found between adolescents' social media addictions and quest for significance. The results obtained from the research were discussed and interpreted in the light of the literature. In addition, in line with the results of this study, recommendations for research and practice are presented.