Abstract

The aim of the study is to examine the reading habits and social media usage behaviors of high school students. The participants of the descriptive study are 517 high school students studying in different classes in the fall semester of the 2019-2020 academic year. Descriptive statistics, Chi-Square and one-way analysis of variance (ANOVA) were used to analyze the data. As a result of the findings of the study, it was seen that half of the high school students do not have a reading habit. It has been determined that as the grade level increases, reading habits decrease and female students have better reading habits than male students. In terms of social media use, students spend approximately three hours on their smartphones with social media. Whatsapp, Instagram and Youtube are the most used mobile social media applications. In addition, it has been observed that students who use social media intensively during the day are in the "not reading enough books" or "not reading books" group. Finally, it has been seen that among the reasons why students who do not have the habit of reading, do not find reading fun, being bored while reading a book and spending time with digital games.