Teenagers spend hours each day on social media, and parents and schools worry about what it does to their behaviour and friendships. A new study from Türkiye suggests that more problematic social media use goes with more accepting attitudes towards violence, although the link was weak. It found no link with the quality of teenagers’ friendships.
Researchers at Bitlis Eren University, Erzincan Binali Yıldırım University, Atatürk University and Muş Alparslan University surveyed 450 adolescents aged 13–18 years. The findings appear in BMC Psychology. The students attended high schools in a provincial centre in eastern Türkiye and completed questionnaires on social media addiction, friendship quality and attitudes towards violence.
The design was cross-sectional and correlational, so each student was assessed once. Data were gathered with a demographic form and three questionnaires, and the threshold for statistical significance was set at the conventional five per cent level. The team compared scores across groups and used correlation and multiple regression analyses. Parents gave consent, and the teenagers gave their own assent.
Social media addiction is a pattern of compulsive use that interferes with daily life, such as being unable to cut down or feeling restless without access. Attitudes towards violence describe how far a person sees aggression as acceptable or justified. Peer relationship quality refers to how supportive and close a young person’s friendships are.
Higher social media addiction scores were positively linked to attitudes towards violence. The correlation was modest, at 0.21, which means the two measures tend to rise together but only loosely. In the regression analysis, the link remained statistically significant.
There was no significant link between social media addiction and friendship quality, and peer relationships did not predict addiction scores in the regression either. The regression model explained only 4.2 per cent of the variation in social media addiction, which means it left most of the variation unexplained. The authors describe its explanatory power as limited.
The authors say problematic use should be considered alongside behavioural and psychosocial factors, not only social ones. They suggest that school-based programmes and digital literacy teaching could encourage healthier use of social media.
The study has clear limits. Because it measured everything at one time, it cannot show whether heavy use shifts attitudes, or whether teenagers with more accepting views use social media more heavily. The association was weak, the answers were self-reported, and the sample came from one region, so the results may not apply elsewhere. The study also did not measure actual violent behaviour.
Earlier research has linked excessive social media use to poorer mental health and risky behaviour in young people. This study adds a modest link to violence-related attitudes, and suggests that friendship quality is not the main route. School programmes that teach digital literacy may therefore be better aimed at how teenagers use platforms than at their friendships.
