The relationship between social media use and life satisfaction: Sakarya University example

Current technological improvements affect people's daily lives and their communication forms. Social networks designed to improve social interaction among people create an important freedom space for them. Users can express themselves by using personal pages they created and can share some personal characteristics with other people interactively. Thanks to interactive networks, people can communicate and these interactions can make contributions to their life satisfaction. Main purpose of this study is to determine if the relation between social media use levels of the students in Faculty of Communication in Sakarya University and their life satisfactions can vary or not. The universe of the study consists of Sakarya University Faculty of Communication undergraduate students who continue their education in the 2019-2020 academic year. Sample group of this research consist of 250 students, 110 of which are female while the rest is male, in Sakarya University in 2019-2020. To collect data, personal information form; social media use scale and Life satisfaction scale were used. These data were analyzed by using SPSS 23 running different tests like frequency table, Spearman Brown Correlation Coefficient, independent sample t test, anova, chi-square, regression analysis and constative statistic analysis. The results collecting from the study showed young people use social media for messaging, communication with known people and getting information most. The research showed people having lower life satisfaction level use social media networks more and female students have higher life satisfaction levels comparing with the males.