An investigation of the relationships between the quality of social relationships and smart phone addiction in high school students

The purpose of this research is to reveal the causal relationships between the qualities of social relations of high school students and smartphone addictions. For this purpose, various variables related to smartphone addiction were investigated and loneliness, perception of mother, perception of father, social self-efficacy and gender variables were reached. On the other hand, the target mass of the research has been taken into consideration and the scope of the investigation has been improved. Within this scope, variables such as continuous internet connection, usage purpose multiplicity, social media, quality time with family, quality time with friends and lack of work are reached. This research was carried out in an exploratory sequential hybrid method design. The research group consists of students who are studying in 11th and 12th grade of high school. In the qualitative process of the research, a focus group interview was held once and 8 high school students participated in this interview. In the quantitative dimension of the study, 620 students took part. The data collection package included the Smart Phone Addiction Scale Short Form, UCLA Loneliness Scale Short Form, Parent Perception Scale and Social Self-Efficacy Scale; the Focus Group Interview Form developed by the researcher and the Personal Information Form. Descriptive statistics, Pearson Moment Product Correlation and multiple linear regression analyzes were performed on the obtained data. According to the results of the research, there is a positive tendency between smartphone addiction and usage intent multiplicity, social media and lack of work; There is significant correlation between perception of mother and quality time with friends. However, there was no significant relationship between smartphone addiction and gender, loneliness, perception of father, social self-efficacy and continuous internet connection. According to the linear regression results; perception of mother, gender (in favor of girls), purposeful multiplicity, social media, quality spending with friends, and lack of work are the predictors of smartphone addiction. Social networking has been found to provide the highest significant contribution to variance in smartphone dependence after multilevel linear regression analysis. The social media is followed by a lot of not having work to do, quality time with friends, maternal perception, gender (favoring girls) and intentional use. Keywords: Smartphone addiction, loneliness, perception of mother, perception of father, social self-efficacy, gender, social media, qualitative.