The Relationship between Internet Addiction, Peer Pressure and Perceived Social Support among Adolescents

The aim of the present research was to investigate the relationships between internet addiction, peer pressure and social support among adolescents. The sample of the study consisted of 558 adolescents (290 female 268 male) selected from high school 9th and 10th grade at Mersin. The data related with the internet addiction was gathered by means of Internet Addiction Questionnaire developed by Young (1998) and adapted to Turkish culture by Bayraktar (2001). The data related with the peer pressure gathered with the peer Pressure Questionnaire developed by Kıran (2002) and Perceived Social Support Measure developed by Yıldırım (1997) was used to measure the social support. To examine the relationships between internet addiction, peer pressure and social support, gender X peer pressure (low-medium- high), gender X peer support (low-medium-high), gender X parental support (low-medium- high) and gender X teachers‟ support (low-medium-high) design four different analyses of variance was applied to the Internet Addiction Questionnaire scores of the adolescents. For low, medium and high peer pressure, peer support, parental support and teachers‟ support, 0,5 standard deviation was used as cut off point. The results showed that the lower the peer pressure, internet addiction decreases. Moreover, the more the parental and teachers‟ support increase, internet addiction scores of the adolescents decrease. Furthermore, it was observed that internet addiction scores of the adolescents differed according to gender, and the internet addiction scores of the girls were lower than that of boys. Otherwise, no relationship was observed between internet addiction and peer support. The results were discussed in the light of related literature.