Social media addiction, perfectionism, and relationship satisfaction in romantic relati̇onships (A case study of gen Z)

With the emergence and development of the Internet and social media, romantic relationships are changing, as in every aspect of human life. The internet and social media affect the start and progress of romantic relationships. While the internet and social media are expanding their usage area day by day, a generation comes to the fore. Generation Z has witnessed the development of the internet and social media due to the years they were born and have never been in a world without these technological opportunities. Considering this situation, the effects of social media on Generation Z romantic relationships become a remarkable issue. The research was conducted with 313 people, 239 women and 74 men, belonging to Generation Z in romantic relationships in order to examine the relationships between social media addiction, perfectionism and relationship satisfaction in Generation Z romantic relationships and to examine the differentiation effect of various variables on these phenomena. Data were obtained using the Demographic Information Form, Social Media Addiction Scale-Adult Form, Perfectionism in Romantic Relationships Scale and Relationship Satisfaction Scale. Pearson correlation analysis, multiple regression analysis, independent groups t test and one-way analysis of variance were used in the study. As a result of the multiple linear regression analysis, it was found that the sub-dimensions of perfectionism significantly predicted relationship satisfaction by 39%, while the sub-dimensions of social media addiction did not make a significant contribution to the model. In addition, it was concluded that perfectionism had an indirect, significant and negative mediation effect between social media addiction and relationship satisfaction. It was also found that social media addiction differed significantly according to marital status and age, while perfectionism and relationship satisfaction differed significantly according to gender. It was also found that marital status, age and relationship duration did not make a significant difference on perfectionism and relationship satisfaction, while gender and relationship duration did not make a significant difference on social media addiction. The findings were discussed within the framework of the related literature and recommendations were presented.