Effects of Social Media Addiction on Physical Activity Level and Exercise Capacity in University Students

The internet, one of the new communication technologies, has become an indispensable part of human life as it makes people's lives easier, provides people with the advantage of saving time, and facilitates and accelerates information acquisition.

Thanks to the internet, people can do many daily tasks quickly with minimal physical effort and cost. This makes personal and business life easier. Internet technology has many positive features. This network, which develops and changes daily, has become indispensable for many people. In addition to all these positive features, today, this situation emerges as a new addiction phenomenon. In cases where there is no parental or teacher supervision in their use of social media, adolescents encounter negative content.

There is a high probability of being affected by the contents. Sharing sites such as Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Linkedin, YouTube, and Tumblr, which are very popular social media networks that have entered our lives, have been used by many people in the world and in Turkey for a long time. It seems that the rapid increase in usage rates and durations will continue rather than decrease.

The intense amount and duration of use brings the phenomenon of "addiction" to the agenda. People seek and express in virtual environments what they cannot achieve or express freely in real life. These types of actions increase people's usage time, So much so that this situation causes addiction. Many studies have been conducted in the literature to investigate the effect of social media and digital game addiction on physical activity levels. Although many studies have been conducted to examine social media addiction and the effects it causes, there is no research on the effects of social media addiction on functional exercise capacity and maximal exercise capacity. No study has been found investigating its effect. For this reason, the investigators think that there is a need for a study in this direction in the literature. The aim of this study is to investigate the effect of social media addiction on functional exercise capacity and maximal exercise capacity in university students.