The Relationship between 8th grade students’ social media use and hope and life satisfaction

The purpose of this study is to determine the relationship between the duration of social media use and the level of hope and life satisfaction of eighth-grade students. To this end, the study tested two hypotheses: (a) life satisfaction decreases with increasing duration of social media use, and (b) the level of hope decreases with increasing duration of social media use. The study sample consists of 261 secondary school students, including 163 girls (62.5 %) and 98 boys (37.5 %), attending the eighth grade in central districts of East Anatolia Region in Türkiye (mean age = 18, SD = .589). The data collection instruments used in the study were the personal information form and the hope and life satisfaction scales. The personal information form included demographic variables and asked students how many minutes per day they used social media in the past six months, aiming to determine the amount of time spent by students on social media platforms. Platforms such as Facebook, WhatsApp, and Twitter were included in the social media category. The results indicate that as the duration of social media use increases, students` life satisfaction and hope levels decrease. Regression analysis results, conducted to understand the causality of the relationship between variables, suggest that the increase in the duration of social media use can be identified as one of the reasons for the decrease in life satisfaction and hope levels.