A study of Facebook addiction tendencies of secondary and high school students in terms of age and gender (Sakarya province sample)

The goal of this study is to investigate whether Facebook addiction tendencies of secondary and high school students in Sakarya province is related to age and gender. The study was carried out with screening model, which is one of the quantitative research models. As Facebook usage of students was measured transiently at a single occasion, cross-sectional screening model was used. 1203 students attending secondary schools in Adapazarı, Serdivan and Erenler districts of Sakarya province and 722 students attending high schools in Adapazarı district in 2016-2017 academic period were selected as study sample by using Convenience Sampling Method, which is one of the Non-Random Sampling methods. 985 girls (51.2 %) and 940 boys (48.8 %) constituted the study sample. 615 students were excluded from the evaluation as they had no Facebook account. Therefore, the study continued with 1310 students who constituted the main population subject to evaluation. 556 of these students were girls and 754 boys. Data collection tools of the study were Facebook addiction scale and demographic information form. Data were collected by means of a survey which was designed with a combination of Facebook addiction scale and demographic information form. In data analysis, frequency and percentile values were obtained to study demographic features of the students and two-way ANOVA test was used in order to investigate the changes in Facebook addiction tendencies caused by "Age", "Gender" and "Age and Gender". Study results indicate that Facebook addiction tendency is not significantly related to gender but is significantly related to age and age-gender interaction. It was found that Facebook addiction tendencies of boys are stronger although there is no significant difference between genders. When we evaluated the effect of age-gender interaction on Facebook addiction tendency, we found that Facebook addiction tendencies falls as the age of male and female students rises. We observed several breaking points when we examined the effect of age and gender on Facebook addiction tendency. One of these breaking points is the remarkable fall of Facebook addiction tendencies among boys and girls at transition from the age of 14 to 15. Another breaking point is that Facebook addiction tendencies of only 14-year-old girls are stronger than boys despite the fact that Facebook addiction tendencies of boys between the ages of 11 and 18 are stronger than girls of all age groups. Keywords: Facebook, Addiction, Facebook Addiction.