The relationship of high school students' social media addiction with forgiveness and perfectionism

The aim of this study is to examine the relationship between high school students' social media addiction and forgiveness and perfectionism. Another aim is to investigate whether social media addiction differs according to gender, age, grade level, school type, duration of social media use and the number of actively used social media applications. The research group consists of 9, 10, 11 and 12th grade 472 girls and 396 boys, totally 868 high school students studying at 5 different high schools in Gemlik, Bursa in the 2018-2019 academic year. Personal Information Form, Social Media Disorder Scale, Adolescent Forgiveness Scale and Child and Adolescent Perfectionism Scale were used as data collection tools in this study. Analysis of the data in the study was carried out using Mann Whitney U Test, Kruskal Wallis-H Test, Spearman-Brown Rank Differences Correlation analysis techniques. As a result of the research, while there was a positive and significant relationship between high school students' social media addiction levels and social-based perfectionism; No significant difference was found with self-directed perfectionism. A negative significant relationship was found between high school students' social media addiction levels and forgiveness levels. On the other hand, there is a negative significant relationship between the social media addiction levels of high school students and the components of forgiveness, which is one of the sub-dimensions of forgiveness; A positive and significant relationship was found with maintaining anger and taking revenge. It was seen that the relationship between high school students' social media addiction levels and empathy, one of the sub-dimensions of forgiveness, was not significant. As a result of the research, it was determined that the social media addiction levels of high school students showed a significant difference according to the gender variable and this difference was in favor of female students. On the other hand, it was observed that social media addiction did not differ significantly according to age, grade level and school type, but differed significantly according to the duration of social media use and the number of active social media accounts. The research findings were discussed within the framework of the relevant literature and suggestions were presented.