The Relationship of Social Media Usage Areas and Addiction

There is a current need to focus on the relationship of social media areas and the addictiveness of social media practices. The fact is that social media, the effects of which can be found in every moment of daily life to the extent that it is easily accessible to almost every individual, has the potential to penetrate all macroand micro-level relationships of the individual (political, social, economic, cultural, etc.) in the same way. Both an individual’s needs and desires, as well as social media practices in terms of areas of use, make social media addiction possible. In this study, the relationship that social media usage has with addiction, over the headings of subject-freedom, an alternative media, democratic culture, and psychological satisfaction, which are the most important social media usage practices of individuals found in the existing literature, is theoretically discussed based on the literature using the technique of descriptive analysis. The importance of the relationship that addiction has with social media in terms of its structural features and usage areas has been emphasized in the results of the study at the same time as being separate from the existing studies in the literature. It has also been expressed in the literature that related to the use of social media, these usage areas, which correspond to the imposition of much more positive meaning in four basic stages, can at the same time open the road to social media addiction.

Citation: Babacan, M. E. (2016). The relationship of social media usage areas and addiction. Addicta: The Turkish Journal on Addictions, 3, 20-28.