DOES SOCIAL MEDIA USE AFFECT OUR REAL-LIFE RELATIONSHIPS: FOCUS ON GENDER

This paper explores two relationships. Firstly, the relationship between the time students spend on social media and the time they spend socializing face-to-face with friends in real life was tried to uncover. Secondly, the researcher wanted to see if gender is a factor in the amount of time students spend on social media or socializing face-to-face with friends in the real world. Data were collected from a preparatory school at a state university in Istanbul through a questionnaire. Sixty-nine B1 level students (46 males, 23 females) were included in this study. All of the participants were aged between 18 and 20. This is quantitative research, and a survey method was adopted. In order to analyze the data, firstly, descriptive statistics were analyzed, and a Kolmogorov-Smirnov test was implemented. As none of the data was normally distributed, a non-parametric test was conducted to see the correlation between time spent on social media and time spent with friends. The correlation between the two variables mentioned was not found to be significant. Secondly, so as to see whether there was a relationship between gender and both the time spent on social media and socializing with friends in real life, a Mann- Whitney U test was implemented. The data revealed that there was not a significant difference between the time spent on social media and time spent socializing with friends. The results of this study also demonstrated that gender and the time spent on social media and face to face in real life is not significantly related.