Young people use social media more than others, and this comes to the fore with COVID-19. This research aims to analyze to what extent the COVID-19 fear and loneliness which affect social media addiction in young adults and to what extent this effect changes as per gender. In this research, the UCLA Loneliness Scale-8, the Fear of COVID-19 Scale, and the Social Media Addiction Scale were used. Through convenience sampling, a total of 507 young adults aged 18-24 years were selected for the research sample. In the evaluation of research data, frequencies, percentages, correlation coefficients and multiple linear regression analysis were used. The mean duration of time spent on social media was 4.26±2.324 hours per day, and mostly used application was the WhatsApp (31.2%). Social media addiction has weak positive relationships with COVID-19 fear and loneliness, and moderately positive relation-ship between the time spent on social media, and, the time spent on social media has weak positive relationships with COVID-19 fear and loneliness. COVID-19 fear, loneliness, and time spent on social media were identified accounted for 17.1% of the variance in social me-dia addiction for the total group and identified accounted 17.5% for female group. Loneliness was not included in the model for the male participants, rather, the COVID-19 fear and time spent on social media were the predictors of social media addiction for 20.5% in men.
Key words: Social media, social media addiction, COVID-19 fear, lonelines
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