Perspect Psychiatr Care. 2022 Mar 13. doi: 10.1111/ppc.13064. Online ahead of print.
ABSTRACT
PURPOSE: The present study was conducted in a cross-sectional and descriptive design to examine the relations between alexithymia levels and social media addictions of nursing students.
METHOD: The study population consisted of nursing department students, and the sampling consisted of 202 students who had social media accounts and who volunteered to participate in the study. The study data were collected online between November 01, 2020 and November 08, 2020 with the questionnaire, Social Media Addiction Scale-Adult Form, and Toronto Alexithymia Scale. The data were evaluated with the Student’s t, one-way analysis of variance, Kruskal-Wallis, Mann-Whitney U, and correlation analysis.
RESULTS: It was found that 75.2% of the students were female, 57.9% were in the 18-20 age group, 60.3% of them spent 2-3 h a day on social media; social media addiction mean score was 64.81 ± 5.80 alexithymia mean score was 71.27 ± 8.62, and 46.03% were completely alexithymic. It was also found that there was a statistically positive and significant relation between the social media addiction and alexithymia scores of the students (p < 0.05).
CONCLUSION AND RECOMMENDATIONS: It was determined that the mean alexithymia and social media addiction scores of the students were high, and they affected each other. In this respect, it is recommended that students be given training on limiting the use of social media.
PRACTICE IMPLICATIONS: Social media addiction average score was found to be high in nursing department students. The alexithymia score averages of the nursing department students were found to be high. It was determined that the COVID pandemic nursing department students increased the time they use social media.
PMID:35279855 | DOI:10.1111/ppc.13064
