The purpose of the study was to examine secondary school students' attitudes towards social media and their loneliness levels in terms of gender and whether they do sports or not. The sample of the study consisted of 175 female and 269 male secondary school stıdents. To collect data personal information form, Social Media Attitude Scale (Otrar ve Argın, 2013) and UCLA Loneliness Scale (Russell, Peplau, & Cutrona, 1980) were used to in this study. Independent t test analysis was conducted to examine whether the participants' social media attitudes and loneliness levels differed with regard to gender and do sport. According to the results, there was no significant difference in social media attitudes (t = -.832, p > .05) with regard to gender. However, loneliness levels of the participants seems to be significantly different with regard to gender (t = -6.513, p = .000). When the participants were examined whether they do sports or not, there was not any significant difference in social media attitudes (t = -.427, p> .05). However, the levels of loneliness was significantly found to be different in terms of doing sports or not (t = -3.675, p = .000). Furthermore, there was not a significant relationship between social media attitudes and loneliness (p > .05). It can be concluded that sport and regular physical activity can be considered as a means to provide environments where individuals will feel far away from the feeling of loneliness and that they will feel themselves more valuable.
Perceived Benefits and Risks of Social Media: Ethiopian Secondary School Students’ Perspectives
