Social Media Use Disorder in Adolescents: Relationship to Attachment Styles and Family Harmony. An Approach Based on Structural Equation Modeling

Abstract

Introduction. Adolescence is a critical period of rapid growth and change during which family harmony and attachment styles play a signifi-cant role in shaping behavior. This study exam-ines how these factors influence social media use disorder among adolescents using structural equation modeling. Methods. In this study, 355 high school students aged 14-18 (53.5% girls) studying at various levels of high school affiliated with the Ministry of National Education in Turkey participated in the 2023-2024 academic year. The study data were collected by the convenience sampling method in the classrooms where the students were enrolled. Results. According to the results obtained in the study, secure, avoidant, and anxious attachment styles have a mediating role in the relationship between family harmony and social media use disorder. An analysis of the effect values ob-tained from structural equation modeling shows that family harmony negatively predicts anxious and avoidant attachment styles. On the other hand, family harmony positively predicts a se-cure attachment style, while a secure attachment style negatively predicts social media use disor-der. The model in this study shows that anxious and avoidant attachment positively affects so-cial media use disorder. The results indicate that family harmony negatively predicts anxious and avoidant attachment styles while positively pre-dicting secure attachment, which in turn reduces social media use disorder. Anxious and avoid-ant attachment styles were found to mediate the relationship between family harmony and social media use disorder. These findings emphasize the need for parental education programs to strengthen family unity and mitigate negative social media use among adolescents. Conclusions. The harmful use of social media by adolescents affects attachment to parents and family harmony. For this reason, providing fam-ily unity along with parent education will reduce the level of adolescents' exposure to negative social media. Limitations of the study. This study was con-ducted in one of the eastern provinces of Turkey. Therefore, the sample was limited to students enrolled in high schools in this province. In ad-dition, data were collected only from adoles-cents, and no data were collected from parents or teachers. Another limitation is that data were collected at one time instead of at different times from the same individuals.