Investigation of the relationship between technology dependence, virtual bullets and virtual victim levels of university students

The fact that technology has become an indispensable part of life by making positive contributions to the lives of people has caused people not to move away from technology and there is a desire to use technology continuously. With the introduction of technology into this life, it has brought some problems. Some of these are technology addiction, virtual bullying and virtual victimization, which poses a significant threat to people's lives. Virtual bullying and virtual victimization are damaging people's daily lives, education, social relationships and lifestyles. When individuals use technology, the likelihood of situations that can harm them, such as being a virtual bully or a virtual victim, increases. It is thought that university students being away from their families in general and not being under family supervision especially regarding the use of technology devices may affect technology dependence and cyberbullying / victimization situations. In this study, it is aimed to investigate the relationship between technology dependence levels and cyber bullying and virtual victimization of Sivas University students. In the research, relational scanning model, one of the quantitative research methods, was used. In this research, 710 students studying in the fall semester of 2018-2019 academic year were selected as the sample by using Accurate Sampling method. 439 of these students were female (61.8%) and 271 were male (38.2%). Personal Information Form, Technology Addiction Scale and Virtual Bully / Victim Scale were used as data collection tools. The data were collected through a questionnaire. The data were analyzed with SPSS 24 package program. Kruskal-Wallis test, Spearman Correlation Analysis and Kruskal Wallis-H test were used to analyze the data. The statistics were based on .05 significance level. According to the data obtained from the research, it was observed that the average level of technology addiction and cyberbullying and virtual victimization were low according to the mean scores of the university students participating in the research. It was found that there is a positive low level relationship between the cyberbullying and cyber victimization of university students and the levels of technology addiction and cyberbullying and cyber victimization. Keywords: Addiction, Technology Addiction, Cyberbullying, Cyber Victim