Investigation of the relationship between social media use and depression in universty students

In this study, it was aimed to examine the relationship between social media use and depression in university students. In addition, it was also investigated whether there is a significant difference between social media use and depression levels in university students according to demographic variables. This research was conducted with the Google Survey Method. The 'Socio-Demographic Data Form' was used to determine the socio-demographic characteristics of the people participating in the research. In order to determine the social media addiction levels of the participants, the 'Social Media Addiction Scale prepared by Tutgun Ünal and Deniz (2015) was used and to determine the depression levels of the participants, the Beck Depression Index (BDI), of which the validity and reliability study was conducted in Turkey by Teğin (1980) and Hisli (1988), was used. The sample of the research consists of 210 university students who continue their education at Iğdır University in 2021-2022. According to the data obtained, there is a weak positive correlation between Beck Depression Inventory and Occupation sub-dimension, Mood Regulation sub- dimension, Repetition sub-dimension, conflict sub-dimension and Social Media Addiction Scale. According to the results of the analysis, no statistically significant difference was found between gender, class, marital status, department of education and device groups used to access social media in terms of scale scores. The Beck Depression Inventory scores of the participants in the 20-21 age group are statistically significantly higher than the participants in the 22 and over age group. It was determined that the Occupational sub-dimension scores of the participants who stated that they used social media were statistically significantly higher than those who stated that they did not use it. The Occupational sub-dimension scores of the participants who stated that they used social media for more than 7 years were statistically significantly higher than those who stated that they had been using social media for less than 1 year. The Repetition sub-dimension scores of the participants who stated that they used social media for more than 7 years were statistically significantly higher than the participants who stated that they used it for 1-3 years.