The Predictive Level of Social Media Addiction for Life Satisfaction: A Study on University Students

ABSTRACT

Social media addiction is considered as a sort of Internet addiction. Individuals who spend too much time on social media have a desire to be notified of anything immediately, which can cause virtual tolerance, virtual communication and virtual problems. Behaviours that force the person into these actions can be explained as social media addiction. This study aims to determine the relationship between social media addiction and life satisfaction among university students as well as the effect of social media addiction on predicting life satisfaction. The participants are composed of 612 (380 female, 232 male) university students. Social Media Addiction Scale-Adult Form (Şahin and Yağcı, 2017) and Life Satisfaction Scale (Diener, Emmons, Larsen and Griffin, 1985; Köker, 1991) were used in the data collection process. Pearson product-moment correlation coefficient and regression methods were used to analyse the data. The results indicated that there is a negative relationship and moderate correlation between life satisfaction and social media addiction. There is also a significant relationship, according to the regression analysis, between life satisfaction and social media addiction levels.