Examination of Young Adults’ Frequency of Social Media Use within a Narcissistic Context

Abstract

In today's digital age, the use of social media for different purposes is rapidly increasing due to the possibilities provided by the internet infrastructure, and the efforts of today's people to analyze the main causes of social media-related intensive communication practices suggest the influence of personality traits. Thus, this research aims to determine the relationship between the narcissistic personality structure of young adults and their social media use considering that narcissistic personality characteristic may be influenced by individuals’ social media use. The research is a descriptive study in the screening model. The research sample consisted of 390 students receiving pedagogical formation education at Kahramanmaras Sutcu Imam University, Faculty of Education during the spring term of 2016-2017 academic year. They were selected by random sampling method.This research deployed three data collection tools. “Personal Information Form” and ‘Social Media Use Questionnaire’ developed by the researcher; ‘Narcissism Questionnaire' developed by Güngör and Selçuk. The research data were analyzed through SPSS 17.0. Arithmetic mean, frequency, standard deviation and percentage distributions were calculated to determine socio-demographic features of the participants; their social media use frequency and narcissistic personality traits. Pearson Moment Product Correlation Analysis was used to determine the relationship between participants’ social media use frequency and their  narcissistic personality traits, between narcissistic personality trait and social media categories use frequency with age; independent group t-test to reveal narcissistic personality traits and social media categories use frequency in terms of gender. Research results have revealed that the narcissistic personality traits of young adults who receive pedagogical formation education are low, and there is a low level of relationship between narcissism and some categories of social media use. The most frequent use of social media by participants was to check their daily emails and to follow people via internet and collect information (google stalking).

Keywords: Social Media, narcissism, young adults