Investigation of the relationship between social media addiction and well-being of university students: Çağ University sample

Social media or social networks are all web-based services that enable people to open a profile account that is only for themselves, surrounded by certain limits, to openly share their profiles with other people's profiles within the same borders, and to enable them to see other posts and navigate between profiles and links in this way. Social media addiction is a psychological problem that progresses through mental, sensory, and behavioral stages and causes problems such as preoccupation, mood regulation, repetition, and conflict in many areas of daily life such as private, work/academic, and social areas. Personal well-being is defined as feeling more positive emotions, less negative emotions, and getting too much satisfaction from life. There may be a situation where excessive use of social media can affect people's well-being, as well as the addiction created by excessive use of social media. Therefore, this study, it was aimed to examine the relationship between social media addiction levels and personal well-being levels in university students. A survey consisting of sociodemographic information form, Bergen Social Media Addiction Scale, and Personal Well-Being Scale were used as data collection tool in the study, in which a total of 151 students, 101 of whom were women and 50 were men, participated within the scope of Çağ University sample. The data obtained from the participants were analyzed using the IBM SPSS.26 statistical program. As a result of the analysis, no significant relationship was found between social media addiction and personal well-being. A significant difference was found between social media addiction levels according to gender, and it was found that women showed higher social media addiction levels than men. A significant difference was found between social media addiction and the variable of going to a psychologist/psychiatrist. The aim of this research is to support the limited studies in the literature on the relationship between social media addiction and personal well-being. However, in future studies on this subject, it is recommended to use larger sample groups and to work with more diverse variables.