Investigation of university students' socialization tactics and internet addiction and metaverse awareness levels

Our study aims to examine the relationship between metaverse awareness of university students and internet addiction and socialization tactics. In our study, the 'Personal Information Form,' the 'Metaverse Scale' developed by Süleymanoğulları et al. (2022), the internet addiction scale developed by Young, and the socialization tactics scale developed by Bogler and Somech (2002) were used. We employed the relational survey model, which is a qualitative research method, for our study. The population of our study consisted of students from Ağrı İbrahim Çeçen University. According to the findings of our study, no statistically significant relationship was found between the sub-dimensions of the internet addiction scale and the sub-dimensions of the metaverse scale. However, there was a statistically significant moderate positive relationship between the total scores of the socialization tactics scale and the total scores of the metaverse scale. Additionally, a statistically significant moderate positive relationship was observed between the total scores of the socialization tactics scale and certain sub-dimensions of the metaverse scale, including technology, while there was a statistically significant low positive relationship with digitalization, social, and lifestyle sub-dimensions. Furthermore, a statistically significant low positive relationship was found between the sub-dimensions of the socialization tactics scale and the sub-dimensions of the metaverse scale. Specifically, a statistically significant low negative relationship was detected between the lifestyle sub-dimension of the metaverse scale and the political tactics sub-dimension of the socialization tactics scale. Keywords: Metaverse, Internet Addiction, Socialization, Socialization Tactics.