Investigation of the effect of social media addiction levels of high school students on motivation to participate in physical activity

This study aimed to examine the effects of high school students' social media addiction levels on their motivation to participate in physical activity. The population of the study consists of 1350 high school students studying in Tunceli province in the 2024-2024 academic year. The sample of the study consists of 231 high school students. A 6-question personal information form, motivation to participate in physical activity scale and social media addiction scale for adolescents were used for data collection. Licensed SPSS 26 program was used to analyze the data obtained. Before starting the statistical analysis, normality distributions of the data were examined and it was seen that the data met the normality assumption. For this reason, independent sample t-test was used in the analysis of binary variables in the personal information form and one-way analysis of variance (ANOVA) was used in the analysis of more than two variables. Pearson correlation analysis was used to determine the relationship between the two scales. The significance level was based on (p<0,05). in determining the differences between the groups. When the findings obtained are analyzed, a significant difference is observed between the motivation to participate in physical activity and the variables of class and income level. In this context, it is seen that the motivation to participate in physical activity decreases as the class level of the participants increases. At the same time, it is seen that participants whose family income level is relatively middle level have the lowest average score. It was seen that there was a significant difference between the social media addiction scale for adolescents, which is another data collection tool of the study, and the gender variable (p<0,05). In this context, it can be said that female students have more social media addiction than male students. It can be said that there is a low level negative relationship between motivation to participate in physical activity and social media addiction scale. At the same time, it is seen that the most used social media platform among social media platforms is Whatsapp. As a result, it is seen that high school students' motivation to participate in physical activity is above the medium level and their social media addiction is also at the medium level. In this context, it can be said that teachers, who are in the most relationship with high school students, should increase their participation in physical activity and raise awareness about the need to use social media as they should.