The relationship between the internet, social media and digital game addictions of high school students and levels of loneliness, selfiness and life satisfaction, Malatya example

Today, the use of the internet, which is increasing day by day, has a widespread use area as a tool for people to obtain information, surf, shop, play games, chat, share, self-presentation and use leisure time. Socio-cultural and psychological characteristics of people are seen as an important factor in the process of internet use. Our aim is to measure the internet, social media, digital game addiction levels of high school students and to examine the relationship between adolescents' loneliness, selfishness, life satisfaction, psychosocial structure, gender, family structure, biological structure, economic level etc. characteristics. As a result of the research, it is to reveal the meaningful relationships between them. The study was realized with the participation of 990 high school students residing in Malatya province. In the research, literature review was made using illustrative and descriptive methods and questionnaire technique was applied. Personal Information Form, Young's Internet Addiction Short Form, Social Media Addiction Scale, Game Addiction Scale (GAS; Game Addiction Scale, UCLA Loneliness Scale Short Version, Selfishness Scale / Adaptive Selfishness and Life Satisfaction Scale were used in research. SPSS 21.0 package program was used in the analysis of the data. While frequency tables were applied for descriptive statistics, percentage analyses were made for relationships between variables. Correlation technique was used for analysis between scales and Kruskal Walis H Test, Anova Test, T test etc. were used for significance values between variables. According to the findings obtained as a result of the study, it was seen that the majority of the sample used the internet for leisure time, surfing and playing games. In addition, the general majority of our sample stated that they spend 1-5 hours on the internet in a day. Approximately 25% of the sample is highly internet addicted is also an important result for our research. Significant relationships were found between gender and internet, social media, digital game addiction, loneliness, selfishness and life satisfaction. The meaningful relationships were found between the time spent by our individuals on the internet, their purpose of using the internet, their level of loneliness, selfishness and life satisfaction, the social media accounts they use the most, the number of social media accounts they use, the frequency of self-sharing on social media and family unity, internet and social media addiction. On the other hand, there was found between the most played game and digital game addiction. In our study, there was not found any relationships between internet, social media and digital game addictions and economic income, class level and age factor. All these results obtained support the general purpose of our research. In addition, these results show that pathological behaviours such as internet, social media and digital game addiction are increasing in society and these behaviours cause deep hurts in both the socio-cultural and psychological structures of individuals. Keywords: Internet addiction, social media addiction, digital game addiction, adolescence, loneliness, selfishness, psychosocial structure, life satisfaction