A survey of 488 college students was
conducted in Turkey to investigate the relationship between
social network usage, shame and Internet addiction. It was
hypothesized that a relationship between shame and social
network usage was mediated by Internet addiction. First of
all, according to simple regression analysis, it was found that
shame significantly and positively predicted social network
usage. A simple mediation model, which was applied with
regression-based mediation analysis, showed that shame did
not predict social network usage when Internet addiction was
inserted in the model. Therefore, Internet addiction is a
mediating variable between shame and social network usage.
According to the results of mediation analysis, Internet
addiction of college students is an important predictor in
terms of social networking site (SNS) usage.