Examining social media addiction and self-compassion and sense of inadequacy in university students

It was conducted to examine the relationship between university students' social media addiction and self-compassion and feelings of inadequacy. The study was conducted in a descriptive and descriptive pattern. The population of the study was 36790 students registered at İnönü University. The sample of the study was determined as 380 students with a 95% confidence interval and 5% margin of error using the EpiInfo program. The research was completed with a total of 408 students. In collecting data; Form Regarding Personal Information and Social Media Usage Habits, Social Media Addiction Scale, Self-Compassion Scale and Sense of Inadequacy Scale were used. Percentages, mean, standard deviation and Mann Whitney U test and KruskalWallis were used to evaluate the data. The average age of the participants was 21.79 ± 2.94. A significant relationship was found between the students' self-compassion scores and social media addiction scores (p<0.005). While a negative relationship was found between self-compassion scores and social media addiction scores (p<0.05), it was found that sense of inadequacy scores did not have a statistical effect on social media addiction scores (β2 =0.044, p=0.397). In line with the results of the study, it was found that students' self-compassion levels had a significant effect on social media addiction, but the feeling of inadequacy did not have a significant effect on this addiction. Therefore, it can be suggested that interventions aimed at increasing self-compassion may be effective in reducing social media addiction and that more research should be done to understand the effects of the feeling of inadequacy.