The Analysis of the Usage of Social Media as a Recreational Activity Field by University Students

The usage of social media, which has gained a wide currency with the development of technology, causes individuals to value leisure time inside the social media. Analysis of the reasons for university students to prefer social media, which is more passive but has an increasing popularity, instead of active recreational activities and of the purposes in using it is aimed. In this study, “descriptive and scanning survey model” is used as one of the quantitative research techniques. The subject of the study consists of 716 students; 406 of whom are female (56,7%) and 310 of whom are male (43,3%) students of Manisa Celal Bayar University studying during 2016-2017 academic year’s fall term with the average age of 22,19±2,46. In the study, personal information form prepared by the researcher and The Usage Purposes Scale of Social Networks Ko？ak Usluel, Demir&？？nar (2014) are used as data collection tools. While independent t test has been used in the comparison of ensemble average for the analysis of the data, correlation analysis has been used to analyze the relationships among the sub dimensions. The frequency and arithmetic average values have been presented in the statistical notations. As a result of obtained findings, whereas significant differences in favor of female students have been found for the sub-dimensions of research and communication, significant differences in favor of male students have been found for the sub dimension of starting communication with the Usage Purposes Scale of Social Networks. Also it has been found that there is a medium level relationship in a positive direction among the sub dimensions of Usage Purposes Scale of Social Network. Conclusions: As a result, it can be stated that improving technological developments have an important effect on communication process of individuals. Social networks have a significant function of searching for friends, building up relationships as friends and starting a communication with these friend groups especially for the young people at the college ages