Predicting virtual attachment in university students

In parallel with the widespread use of technology and the increase in the use of virtual environments, it is seen that virtual attachment has emerged as a new form of relationship. Especially young adults have started to have relationships through the virtual environment in order to express themselves more easily and establish close relationships, and to put these relationships at the center of their lives. So much so that individuals look forward to communicating with the person or people they have a relationship with over the virtual environment. When they do not interact, they feel uneasiness, anxiety, and curiosity, and this causes young adults to become increasingly distant from their daily lives and become dependent on their interactions in the virtual environment. Virtual attachment is an important condition to be researched and understood in terms of its personal and social consequences. In this descriptive study, an answer was sought to the question of how virtual attachment was predicted in young adults in terms of gender, attachment styles, loneliness, shyness, psychological birth order and parental relationships. For this purpose, data were collected from 451 students to perform regression analysis in order to determine the relationships between variables. During the data collection process, the ethics committee permission was obtained first, and then data were collected from students studying at Kırşehir Ahi Evran University and determined by convenient sampling method, through Google Questionnaires. According to the results obtained as a result of the main purpose of the research, it was seen that while attachment style, loneliness, shyness, psychological birth order and parental relations predicted virtual attachment in university students, gender did not make a significant contribution to the model. A positive and significant relationship between virtual attachment and loneliness, shyness, fearful attachment, preoccupied attachment and dismissive attachment; A negative and significant relationship was found between virtual attachment and parental relationships and secure attachment. As a data collection tool in the research, a Likert-type five-question tool prepared by the researcher was used in order to comment on the Virtual Attachment Scale, Personal Information Form, Relationship Scales Questionnaire, UCLA Loneliness Scale Short Form, Shyness Scale and Parent Relationships developed by the researcher. In the statistical analysis of the data, IBM SPSS Statistics v25.0 package program was used and Stepwise Regression Analysis was performed. The findings obtained from the research were discussed and interpreted together with the findings of previous studies on this subject in the light of the literature. In line with these findings, suggestions were presented to psychological counselors and mental health professionals in line with the understanding and discussion of the concept of virtual attachment for the future.