Investigating the relationship between social media addiction and fair play behaviors among middle school students

The aim of this research is to examine the relationship between social media addiction and fair play behaviors among middle school students. The universe of the research consists of secondary school students studying in secondary schools affiliated to the Ministry of National Education in the 2023-2024 academic year, and the sample of the research consists of 686 volunteer students (357 female, 329 male) studying in secondary schools in Batman province. In our research, survey design from quantitative methods was used. The data of the research were collected with a personal information form, the “Social Media Addiction Scale for Adolescents” developed by Özgenel et al. (2019), and the “Frequency of Exhibiting Fair Play Behaviors Scale” developed by Efe (2006) and adapted to today's curriculum by Temel et al. (2021). In the analysis of the data, arithmetic mean, standard deviation, frequency, and percentage distributions were examined. In the normality test, it was determined that the data was normally distributed. The t-test for independent samples was used in the analysis of binary groups, one-way analysis of variance was used in the comparative analysis of three or more groups, and Tamhane's and Scheffe's tests were used according to the homogeneity of the variances of the groups in the choice of Post-Hoc analysis to determine the differences. Correlation and regression analyses were used for relational analyses. When the results of the analysis were examined, a significant difference was found in favor of male students in the social media addiction levels of secondary school students according to the gender variable. No significant difference was found according to grade level, age, mother-father education level, sport type and athlete license variables. A significant difference was found in the frequency of fair play behaviors of secondary school students according to gender, grade level, age, sport type and athlete license variable. While there was no significant difference in the total scores of the parent education level variables, a significant difference was found in the negative behavior and rival sub-dimensions of the scale. According to the results of the correlation analysis, it was determined that there was no significant relationship between social media addiction and the frequency of fair play behavior. According to the results of the regression analysis, it was concluded that when social media addiction increases, it positively affects the tendency towards the frequency of fair play behavior, but this effect is not significant. According to these results in our research, it was determined that the level of social media addiction of secondary school students was at a low level and the frequency of fair play behaviors was at a medium level.