Investigation of the Mediator Role of Life Satisfaction in the Relationship between Problematic Internet Use and Self-efficacy in Middle School Students

The aim of this study is to determine whether life satisfaction has a mediating role in the relationship between the problematic internet use of secondary school students and their self-efficacy. The research was carried out in relational screening model. The study group of the research consists of 505 secondary school students studying in secondary schools in Konya in the 2021-2022 academic year. The data of the study were collected through the Young Internet Addiction Scale, the Secondary School Self-Efficacy Scale, and the Life Satisfaction Scale for Children. During the analysis of the data, first of all, extreme value analysis, univariate and multivariate normality analyzes and homogeneity tests were performed with the collected data. Afterwards, mediation analysis was performed with the Pearson Moments correlation coefficient and Hayes Process Macro for SPSS to determine the relationship between the SPSS-20 package program and the variables. As a result of the analyzes made within the scope of the research, it was found that the problematic internet use of secondary school students predicted their self-efficacy in a negative way and it predicted their life satisfaction at a positive and significant level. Secondary school students' life satisfaction predicts their self-efficacy positively and significantly. In addition, it has been determined that life satisfaction plays a mediating role in the relationship between problematic internet use and self-efficacy of secondary school students.