Investigation of the relationship between smartphone addiction levels, desire for being liked and loneliness levels: İzmir example

This study aims to examine the correlation between the level of smartphone addiction, the level of loneliness and the level of desire for being liked of students who are studying psychology in İzmir province according to some factors such as gender, class of study, place of residence, income level, daily usage period of smartphone, frequency of social media usage, smart phone usage year and reason of smart phone change. It was aimed to evaluate the correlation of descriptive and predictive effects between smartphone addiction, the desire for being liked and loneliness via relational screening model. The research was initiated by literature review on the studies of smartphone addiction, desire for being liked and loneliness made in Turkey and the World. After the literature review, it was observed that the level of smartphone addiction in university students has reflection on the level of desire for being liked and the level of loneliness. In our research, the aim is to investigate whether there is a significant effect between the level of smartphone addiction in psychology students studying in İzmir province, the level of desire for being liked and the level of loneliness. For this purpose, this research has been carried out in state and foundation universities in İzmir province, 2018-2019 academic year in psychology students. The sample of the study consists of 471 people, 392 female and 79 male students. For the collection of the data "Demographic Information Form" has been applied. To determine the level of smartphone addiction "The Smartphone Addiction Scale" which was developed by Kwon, Lee, Won, Min and Hahn (2013) and adapted into Turkish by Altantuğ, Turan and Akın (2014) has been applied. "The Desire for Being Liked Scale" which was developed by Kaşıkara G. and Doğan T. (2017) and the short form of "Ucla Loneliness Scale", which was developed by Russell d. Peplau (1980) et al and adapted into Turkish by Doğan T. et al (2011), have been applied. The statistical processing and analysis of the obtained data was made use of SPSS demo packet program. Independent samples T test, one way ANOVA and Pearson Moment Product Correlation were performed for statistical analysis According to the findings of the study, there are no significant differences on loneliness between gender and smartphone usage years. In addition, there couldn't be found a significant correlation between gender, smartphone usage year, the reason of smartphone replacement and desire for being liked. On the other hand, income level variable has a significant differences on loneliness and smartphone addiction sub-dimension cyber relationship. There is found significant correlations between the class level of university students and positive expectation and cyber relations. Significant differences are found between the place where students stay and the dimension of social network addiction. Significant differences are found between daily smartphone usage time and smartphone addiction sub-dimensions. There is a significant difference between loneliness and smartphone usage year. The frequency of social media use has had significant impacts on smartphone addiction, loneliness, desire, tolerance, withdrawal and overuse.