The effect of social media addiction of sports sciences faculty students on academic success and academic motivation levels

The aim of this study is to investigate the effects of social media addiction on the academic success and motivation levels of students studying at the Faculty of Sport Sciences. The research was carried out with the voluntary participation of 309 students, 121 female and 188 male, studying at the Faculty of Sport Sciences of Hitit University. During the data collection process, "Personal Information Form", "Social Media Addiction Scale" with 20 questions based on a seven-point Likert scale and "Academic Motivation Scale" with 28 questions were used to collect demographic and academic information. Descriptive statistics, frequency and percentage values were used in the analysis of the data. Initially, data processing included evaluation of standard deviations using Excel, followed by detailed analysis in SPSS 25 software. Normality tests such as Kolmogorov-Smirnov test, QQ plots, skewness and kurtosis measurements confirmed that the data were normally distributed. In the analysis, parametric tests such as independent sample t-tests, Pearson correlation analysis and one-way ANOVA supported by Tukey's post-hoc tests were used to determine significant differences between the groups. As a result of the analyses, it was seen that there were statistically significant differences in the virtual communication sub-dimension and social media addiction total score in the comparison of social media addiction according to the gender variable; and in the amotivation sub-dimension in the comparison of academic motivation scores according to the gender variable. It was seen that there was no statistically significant difference in the comparison of social media addiction and academic motivation scores according to the department variable. While there was no statistically significant difference in the comparison of social media addiction scores according to the class level variable, it was seen that there were statistically significant differences in 3 sub-dimensions when the class levels were examined in academic motivation scores. It was understood that there was no significant effect in the comparison of social media addiction and academic motivation scores according to the sports status variable. While there was no statistically significant difference in the comparison of social media addiction scores according to the academic achievement (GANO) variable, when the academic achievement (GANO) levels were examined, significant differences were found in 2 internal sub-dimensions in academic motivation scores. In the comparison of social media addiction and academic motivation scores according to the residence variable, a statistically significant difference was found in the Virtual Communication sub-dimension, while no significant difference was found in the other sub-dimensions and total scores. In the comparison of social media addiction and academic motivation scores in terms of internet status, no statistically significant difference was found. It was observed that there were low-level positive relationships between social media addiction and academic motivation scores. It is thought that these relationships are important in terms of understanding the effects of social media use on academic life. The results obtained were discussed within the scope of the relevant literature and suggestions were made.