Predictive Relations Between Quest for Significance and Social Media Addiction of Adults

The aim of this study was to analyze quest for significance of adults according to their demographic features and to determine predictive relations between quest for significance and social media addiction of adults. The data of the study were collected from a total of 556 participants, 188 men and 368 women aged 18 and over. Participants were recruited by utilizing convenience sampling technique, and correlational survey method of quantitative research models was adopted within this study. Quest for Significance Scale, Social Media Addiction Scale and Personal Information Form were used as data collection tools. The data from assessment tools were analyzed using the T-test, and multi-group comparisons were made using ANOVA (one-way analysis of variance). The relation between the points acquired from assessment tools was calculated using Pearson's Moments Multiplication Correlation Coefficient. Predictive relations between quest for significance and social media addiction was analyzed using simple linear regression model. Significant difference was determined in quest for significance of adults as a result of the study considering age level, marital status, time spent on social media, the reason for using social media and whether using social media has any impact on sleeping pattern. On the other hand, no significant difference was determined in quest for significance of adults in terms of gender, income and educational background. A moderate positive correlation between quest for significance and social media addiction of adults was determined.


INTRODUCTION
People have the basic need of feeling important, significant or esteemed in the eyes of others (Kruglanski et al., 2014).The sense of significance is identified by a person's perception of how others or members of his group value him (Kruglanski et al., 2022).
Quest for significance or personal significance is the will of a person to be esteemed and deemed important in the eyes of other important people and self (Kruglanski & Bertelsen, 2020;Kruglanski et al., 2009;Kruglanski et al., 2014).Quest for personal significance is defined as a major source of motivation in human behaviours (Kruglanski & Bertelsen, 2020;Kruglanski et al., 2009;Kruglanski & Orehek, 2011).The concept of quest for significance refers to having a competence in the context that the culture in which one lives in is valuable, and what the culture considers "worth achieving".In addition, reaching the appreciation of others, which is important for the individual himself, is also a dimension of the search for importance (Kruglanski et al., 2013).Moreover, it is essential that how achievement, adequacy, reputation and influence is defined socially and culturally (Sedikides et al., 2003).
One's sense of significance provides him self-love (amour propre) in the eyes of members of his reference group as it was depicted by Rousseau (Kruglanski et al., 2013).
Amour propre is a relative and artificial sense in the society.Amour-propre is an artificial process that occurs in society, which leads people to value themselves more than anyone else, inspires all the evil that people do to each other, and is also the main source of honor.(Smith, 2006).Rousseau remarks that amour propre emerges in games of children as soon as they begin to play games.A child never observes others unless looking into himself and without comparing himself with them (Chazan, 1993).A person evaluates himself within his environment, develops a sense on his significance and may continue to quest for significance.The notion of the significance quest is explained with Significance Quest Theory (SQT).
Significance Quest Theory (Kruglanski et al., 2009;Kruglanski et al., 2014;Kruglanski & Orehek, 2011) acknowledges that the desire to matter is a fundamental human need.According to the theory, people get strongly motivated to realize behaviors leading to regain the sense of significance when they suffered a loss of it (Schumpe et al., 2018).SQT states that there is a common core among predefined causes of individual significance quest.Herein personal loss, humiliation, vengeance, group pressure, loyalty to the group leader, self-esteem, appeal of the result, obtaining social status or preserving it, religious perks and monetary benefits even feminism may be the subject (Bloom, 2003;Webber et al., 2017).The quest for significance can occur in the ways of opportunity to behave heroically or existence of audience appreciating the heroism (Kruglanski et al., 2022).SQT mentions three interwoven conditions for the significance quest to be activated (Elliott et al., 2007;Kruglanski et al., 2014).They are a loss of significance, a threatened significance loss and an opportunity for significance gain (Kruglanski & Bertelsen, 2020;Kruglanski et al., 2014;Webber et al., 2017).
Loss of significance: SQT states that an experienced significance loss drives an individual to search and find "proper ways to gain significance" (Kruglanski et al., 2014).
One can suffer loss of significance due to personal failure and humiliation.This loss can be directly connected with intergroup conflicts in which one's group is involved and impacts his own group on his sense of significance.Alternatively, significance loss can happen due to personal failures and misfortune unrelated with conflict (Dugas and Kruglanski, 2014).
A sense of humiliation or kind of dishonors happens due to loss of significance.
Humiliation makes one's sense of personal significance to descend below the normal level.
Then, the individual searches for behaviours to regain or restore downed sense of significance (Webber et al., 2017).What is more, loss of significance is related to insults and injustice perpetrated against a group (e.g., as a Muslim, an Arian, a Jew or a communist) with which an individual identifies strongly, and therefore constituting a key aspect of his social identity.Injustice allegedly perpetrated against one's group may cause an effective sense of significance loss.All these may cause one to feel insignificant and weak (Kruglanski and Bertelsen, 2020;Kruglanski et al., 2009;Kruglanski et al., 2018).
Threat of significance loss: When the basic desire to matter restrained, in other words, individuals encounter a loss of significance or even a threat to it, they become motivated to find ways of regaining their significance (Kruglanski et al., 2018).The threat to the significance can motivate actions intended to prevent it.What is related with the true significance loss is the possible loss that might happen in an event that one's refusal of a vital task (e.g., being a suicide bomber) for self, group or society.Individuals who are proud of their commitment to a group may face humiliation and accusations of hypocrisy in case of avoiding risking their lives to defend their case (Kruglanski et al., 2015).For instance, Japanese Kamikaze pilots of WW II did not want to die nor did they expect heavenly rewards (Ohnuki-Tierney, 2006;as cited in Kruglanski et al., 2014).However, they volunteered because if they refused the mission a grave dishonour would have bestowed upon them and their families and, apparently, it was much more unbearable than an honourable death (Webber et al., 2018).
Opportunity for significance gain: Significance loss or threat of loss can be interwoven with the actions aimed at eliminating or preventing the loss (Kruglanski et al., 2018).The first motivator in the significance quest of individuals does not have to be humiliation or efforts to end poverty and individuals seeking significance and they do not have to be illinformed, exposed to harassment or discrimination.Instead, they can be in a good shape with expectations for a bright future.These individuals get motivated with the appeal of becoming a famous hero or "a truly bigger figure" (Webber et al., 2017).The goal here can not be simply avoiding sense of insignificance as it is in significance loss but going for becoming a super star, in other words, an importance so great that hardly satisfied by daily living conditions (Webber et al., 2017).If an arisen opportunity is likely to help one to gain significance, then one can fight to achieve it.
When the significance quest transcends (as a result of either sense of significance loss or motivation to gain significance) other concerns become suppressed.It releases the behaviour formerly constrained by the latter concerns (empathy for others, kinship, love, etc.) and allows it to be enacted (Kruglanski and Ellenberg, 2020).Sense of insignificance is an unpleasant feeling requesting for action (Kruglanski et al., 2009).As it was also expressed by the above-mentioned views of Rousseau, the significance quest is a product of sociality and social environment.From the early days of childhood, an individual tends to quest for significance within his/her social environment.One of the social environments of our age is social media.One can use social media for the significance quest or incline to it in social media.
Today, rapid popularization of web-based social media (e.g., Facebook, WeChat and Instagram) and change of communication ways between people take place as a result of the developments in information technologies (Hou et al., 2019;Smith & Anderson, 2018).
Adoption of social media is based on its increasing usage as a communication channel in personal as well as business life and other aspects of life (Stieglitz et al., 2014).Since its appearance, social media has been a communication and information sharing platform and brought about a social change.It enabled people to express their ideas and views, and to share them (Taprial and Kanwar, 2012).
In the "Global Overview Report" published with the partnership of We Are Social and Hootsuite, as of January 2022, internet and social media users are respectively reported as 4,95 billion and 4,62 billion.Sixty-two point five per cent of the world population are social media users.In the world, an average of 2 hours and 27 minutes is spent a day on social media.Use of social media in Turkey is more than world average according to Report on Internet and Social Media Habits of Turkey (2021).Population of Turkey, as of January 2022, is 84.69 million.Seventy-seven point seven per cent of the population, 65.8 million in other words, are internet users while 70.8% of the population are social media users.In other words, there are 60 million social media users in Turkey.
Compared to the last year, 6 million more people started to use it.Seven hours and 57 minutes is spent on the internet while 2 hours 57 minutes is spent on social media in our country.
Social media is dynamic, ever-changing and growing.It grows rapidly in terms of diversity, accessibility, effectiveness and use (Taprial and Kanwar, 2012).Although offer many possibilities to increase people's life quality, it is also a double-edged phenomenon with the possibility of bringing some problems such as social media addiction (Leong et al., 2019).Recently, excessive usage of social media have been identified as a behavioural addiction as a result of sharing same symptoms such as withdrawal, conflict, relapse, tolerance and mood modification with other types of addictions (Priyadarshini et al., 2020).
Social media addiction is a term used for individuals spending excessive time on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram or other social media platforms.It affects other aspects of daily life (Grau et al., 2019).Excessive preoccupation with it, preferring online communication rather than face-to-face and using it to increase motivation and decrease stress are some examples of cognitive symptoms of an addiction also seen in the social media addiction (Caplan and High, 2006).Social media addiction as "excessive and habitual use of social media showing itself using it compulsively instead of other activities".Social media may purport compulsive behaviours and even behavioural addiction at a level which may prevent daily functions and productivity (Zivnuska et al., 2019).In his research on causes of social media addiction among college students, Aksoy (2018) determined that participants are tend to use social media because of being unable to make friends, lack of socialization, monotony, keeping up with the developments, sense of performing their duty, maintaining social relations.In the research conducted by Unlü (2018) on individuals over the middle age, communicating with loved ones such as relatives, friends, children and grandchildren were reported as the reasons for using social media.On the other hand, social media is being used for interacting and communicating with friends and family, filling free time, reading new stories, finding a content and staying up to date according to Digital 2022 Global Overview Report (2022).
Research on quest for significance is carried out on topics such as suicide bombers (Kruglanski et al., 2009), terrorism (Kruglanski et al., 2013;Webber et al., 2017), and violence (Jasko et al., 2017;Kruglanski and Bertelsen, 2020).In these studies, it is seen that the factors that lead people to these behaviors are the loss of significance or the threat of loss of significance.On the other hand, it is known that the opportunity to gain significance leads the individual to quest for significance.Searching importance, which can rarely be met by daily life conditions (Webber et al., 2017), leads the individual to quest for significance.In other words, one's desire of retrieving his place in society triggers the quest for significance (Milla et al., 2019).Social media is the communication medium of the current era.As people try to meet many of their needs in this environment, they can also quest for significance in the social media environment.In this context, it can be thought that there is a relationship between quest for significance and social media addiction.When the literature is examined, no research has been found that examines the relationship between quest for significance and social media addiction.On the other hand, there is no research in the literature that reveals the quest for significance according to the demographic characteristics of adult individuals.In this study, it is aimed to determine whether there is a relationship between quest for significance and social media addiction, and if there is a relationship, the direction and strength of the relationship.Consequently, this study sets out answer following questions: 1. How does the quest for significance of adults differ in terms of their demographic characteristics such as gender, age level, level of income, educational background, marital status? 2. How does the quest for significance of adults differ in terms of variables such as time spent in social media, reason for using social media and sleeping pattern)?
3. Does the quest for significance predict social media addiction?

Research Model
This study was designed as a survey study.The survey method provides quantitative and numeric descriptions of trends, attitudes and opinions of a sample from a universe (Creswell, 2014).The significance quest of adults in terms of their different demographic characteristics and the relation between the significance quest and social media addiction of adults were analyzed using relational survey design.

Participants
Significance Quest Scale (SQS), Social Media Addiction Scale Adult Form (SMAS -AF) and Personal Information Form (PIF) were applied to 556 social media users composed of 368 women and 188 men, who are 18 and older, within the study.
Convenience sampling method was used to reach participants.According to Şenol (2012), convenient sampling includes selecting participants among convenient units suitable to attend applications in cases of limitations of time, money and labour force.In terms of participants' socio-economic status, the majority of them live on minimum wage or less.
Most of them are higher education graduates and single who reported that they use social media averagely 8-14 hours a week.In addition to these, most of the participants expressed they use social media to spend time and their sleeping patterns remain are unaffected by that.

Data Collection Tools
Significance Quest Scale (SQS), Social Media Addiction Scale Adult Form (SMAS -AF) and Personal Information Form (PIF) were applied to adults by the researcher.In order to ensure candidness in participants' answers to data collection tools, the required motivation was tried to be provided through explaining the subject and importance of the study.In order to ensure that the participants answered the measurement tools honestly and sincerely, there was no obligation to write their names.

Significance Quest Scale (SQS):
The scale, which was developed by Şahin and Derin (2020) to determine the levels of the significance quest of adults, was applied to 406 adults who were included in the study by the method of convenience sampling.
Exploratory Factor Analysis (EFA) of the measurement tool was conducted by inserting the results of the application.The form, with 4 factors and 26 items, acquired via AFA was applied to 215 adults to collect data for Confirmatory Factor Analysis (CFA).Goodnes-offit (GoF) values, acquired with the data collected from this application, were found as χ 2 /sd= 1.89, CFI= .92,TLI= .91,IFI= .92,GFI= .86,RMSEA= .065.As a result of CFA, the scale was found to have 26 items and 4 factors, and an acceptable goodness-of-fit value.
Sub scales of the measurement tool were named as "Impressiveness, Adorability, Uniqueness, and Quest for Popularity.The convergent validity of the scale was .67;face validity was calculated as .90.The reliability of SQS has been examined for stability and internal consistency.The Cronbach Alpha coefficient calculated within the scope of internal consistency was .95;The test-retest correlation coefficient calculated to determine the stability was found to be .84.This value indicates that the scale is quite reliable.
Internal consistency of the scale was analysed using the data of this study.Calculated Cronbach's Alpha coefficient within this scope is .96.

Social Media Addiction Scale Adult Form (SMAS -AF):
Measurement tool is a scale for determining the social media addiction of adults aged 18-60.During the development phase of Social Media Addiction Scale Adult Form (SMAS -AF) a sampling consisting of 1047 adults was included.Studies of exploratory and confirmatory factor analyses were conducted with the data acquired from the sampling.Factor loadings of the scale were observed to vary between .61 and .87.Chi-square value (χ 2 =7051.32;sd=190, p=0.00) was determined to be significant with the confirmatory factor analysis conducted to confirm two-factor structure of the scale.On the other hand, goodness-of-fit index values were found to be GFI=.90;AGFI=.88;NFI=.59;CFI=.96;RMSA=.059;SRMR=.060.
Cronbach's Alpha coefficient was calculated to identify general internal consistency of the scale.This value was calculated as .94for the whole scale.Test-retest reliability coefficients of scale is .93(Şahin and Yağcı, 2017).Internal consistency of the scale was analysed with the data acquired from this research.Cronbach's Alpha coefficient calculated within this scope is .89.

Personal Information Form (PIF):
The form prepared by the researcher consists of 8 questions.They are aimed at determining following information of the participants: gender, marital status, whether using social media has any impact on their sleeping pattern, age level, level of income, educational background, time spent on social media and the reason for using social media.

Data Analysis
Data acquired from data collection tools were analysed through inserting them to SPSS 25.0 software.Skewness and kurtosis coefficients of the data acquired from SQS and SMAS -AF were calculated to identify if survey data meet assumption of normality.If skewness and kurtosis values are ranged between -1,5 and +1,5 the distribution of data is accepted normal (Tabachnick and Fidell, 2013).Since the skewness and kurtosis values of the data obtained from the SQS and SMAS-AF application vary between -1.5 and +1.5, it can be said that the scale scores are in the normal distribution range.Thus, parametric tests were used within analyses conducted.
T-test was used in the analysis of data to determine if the difference between twodimensional independent sample means is significant.On the other hand, one-way analysis of variance (ANOVA) was applied to determine if the difference between sample means of more than two groups is significant.Additionally, the relation between quest for significance and social media addiction, which are respectively the independent and dependent variables of the research, was analysed with the simple linear regression method.The relation between scores acquired by scales were calculated using Pearson Product-Moment Correlation coefficient.Effect size statistics were calculated in order to determine to what extent the independent variable is effective on the dependent variable (Buyukozturk, 2018).Within this scope, Cohen's d for the compared groups was calculated.Cohen's d is considered small, medium and large effects when it is respectively .20,.50,.80. (Cohen 1998).Eta-square (η 2 ) correlation coefficient was used to calculate effect size within groups compared using ANOVA.Eta-square (η 2 ) is interpreted as small, medium and large effect sizes if it is respectively at the levels of .01,.06,.14(Buyukozturk, 2018).The margin of error of the research is .05.

Ethical considerations
In this study, all rules within the scope of "Higher Education Institutions Scientific Research and Publication Ethics Directive" were followed.None of the actions stated under the title "Actions Against Scientific Research and Publication Ethics", which is the second part of the directive, were taken.

RESULTS
Firstly, findings related to the significance quest of adults according to their demographic characteristics and then results revealing predictive relations between the significance quest and social media addiction are presented within this section of the study.The significance quest of adults was analyzed in terms of gender, age level, level of income, educational background, marital status, time spent on social media, the reason for using social media and whether using social media has any impact on sleeping pattern of them.Findings of the significance quest of adults according to gender, marital status and whether sleeping patterns of them is affected by using social media are depicted in Table 1.As it is seen in Table 1, there are no significant difference between the significance quest of adults according to gender (t=1.83;p>.05).Thus, it can be said that there is no statistically significant difference between quest for significance of women and men.
In addition, there is a statistically significant difference between the significance quest of adults according to marital status (t=5.79;p<.01).Thus, it can be stated that mean of the significance quest scores ( ̅ =63.09) of single participants (n=359) is statistically higher than that ( ̅ =51.69) of married participants (n= 197).Cohen's d, calculated to identify the effect of marital status variable on the significance quest of participants, was found to be .52.This value indicates that the variable of marital status affects the significance quest of participants at a medium level.Accordingly, the significance quest of single adults is higher than that of married adults.
As can be seen from Table 1, there is a statistically significant difference between the significance quest of adults according to whether sleeping patterns of them is affected by using social media (t=4.14;p<.01).Accordingly, mean of scores ( ̅ =65.47) of significant quest of adults whose sleeping pattern is affected by using social media (n=167, ̅ =56.30) is seen to be higher than that of those whose sleeping pattern is not affected by using social media (n=389).Cohen's d, calculated to identify the effect of the variable of whether sleeping pattern is affected by using social media on the significance quest of participants, was found to be .39.This value indicates that the variable of whether sleeping pattern is affected by using social media affects the significance quest of participants at medium level.Accordingly, the significance quest of adults whose sleeping pattern is affected by using social media is higher than that of adults whose sleeping pattern is not affected.
Descriptive statistics and ANOVA results regarding the mean scores of the quest for significance according to the age levels of adults are presented in Table 2.As it is seen in Table 3, no statistically significant difference between means of the significance quest scores of adults according to level of income was found (F=.58; p>.05).
Thus, this study found no statistically significant difference between quest for significance of adults according to level of income.Descriptive statistics and ANOVA results regarding the mean scores of the quest for significance according to educational background of adults are presented in Table 4.As it is seen in Table 5, there is a statistically significant difference between the significance quest of adults according to the time spent on social media on a weekly basis (F=9.01;p<.01).Scheffe's Multiple Comparison Test was performed to determine between which groups significant difference exists.As a result of this test, differences between mean scores of adults spending 21 hours and more a week on social media, those spending 8-14 hours, 2-7 hours and 1 hour or less a week were determined.When mean scores of these groups are examined, means of the significance quest scores of adults spending 1 hour or less a week (n=38, ̅ =46.60), adults spending 2-7 hours a week (n=166, ̅ =55.96), adults spending 8-14 hours a week (n=172, ̅ =57.98) on social media are seen to be smaller than the mean of the significance quest score ( ̅ =69.57) of adults spending 21 hours or more a week on social media.Eta-square (η 2 ) correlation coefficient calculated to determine the effect of the variable of the time spent of social media on the significance quest of participants was found to be .06.This value of eta-square (η 2 ) indicates that the variable of the time spent on social media affects the significance quest of participants at a medium level.Accordingly, it can be stated that the significance quest of adults spending 21 hours or more a week on social media are higher than that of adults spending 14 hours or more a week on social media.Descriptive statistics and ANOVA results regarding the mean scores of the quest for significance according to the reason for using social media of adults are presented in Table 6.As it is seen in Table 6, there is a statistically significant difference between the significance quest of adults according to the reason for using social media (F=13.95;p<.01).
Scheffe's Multiple Comparison Test was performed to determine between which groups significant difference exists.According to this, there are differences between means of scores of adults using social media for spending time, communicating with friends and following news.When means of scores of these groups are examined, mean of the significance quest scores ( ̅ =63.97) of adults using social media for spending time is seen to be higher than mean of the significance quest scores ( ̅ =57.34) of adults using it for communicating with friends (n=130) and mean of the significance quest scores ( ̅ =52.41) of adults using it for following news (n=162).Eta-square (η 2 ) correlation coefficient calculated to determine the effect of the variable of the reason for using social media on the significance quest of participants was found to be .05.This value of eta-square (η 2 ) indicates that the variable of the time spent on social media affects the significance quest of participants at a medium level.Accordingly, it can be said that the significance quest of adults using social media for spending time is higher than that of adults using it for communicating with friends and following news.Findings on whether a relation exists between quest for significance of adults and social media addiction are depicted below.
Correlation between quest for significance and social media addiction and results of simple linear regression analysis related to prediction of social media addiction by the significance quest is depicted in Table 7.A significant and a moderate positive correlation was determined to exist between (r= .477;p<.01) adults' means of scores from Significance Quest Scale (SQS) and those they get from Social Media Addiction Scale Adult Form (SMAS-AF).In addition, the significance quest of adults is seen to be a significant predictor of social media addiction (R= .477,R 2 =.227, p<.01) when Table 7 examined.Twenty-three per cent of the total variance related to social media addiction can be said to be explained with the significance quest.

DISCUSSION
In this section of the study, findings are discussed and interpreted within the existing literature and some suggestions are made according to findings.No statistically significant difference was determined between significance quest of adults according to gender.As a result, it can be said that there is no difference between women and men in terms of significance quest.Even if no study on comparison of women and men in terms of significance quest is encountered in the literature, it was determined in the study carried out by Webber et al. (2017) with regard to suicide bombers that primary motivation sources of female and male suicide bombers are respectively "the opportunity of eradicating the significance loss" and "possibility of gaining significance".In a similar previous study, the role of sensation seeking in political violence was examined.The sensation seeking was considered as an extension of the significance quest in it.In this study that was conducted with 7 separate samples, a relation between gender and the sensation seeking was determined for some of the samples (Schumpe et al., 2018).
The significance quest is assumed to have played a key role; therefore, it has been preserved during the human evolution (Kruglanski et al., 2022).According to this assumption, the significance quest, regardless of gender, distinguishes individuals who carry it.In accordance, it can be argued that the absence of statistically significant differences between the significance quest of women and men is in compliance with the theoretical basis.As stated above, the significance quest called as amour propre by Rousseau is a human-specific passion and humankind can not be distinguished from animals without it.The quest for significance is what makes us human.The thing making humans special is that their behaviors are socially grounded.Humans are social beings like many creatures but the former is cognitive.In other words, animals behaving socially do not think, yet humans do.Goals and purposes of an individual have socially determined meanings.These meanings are related to the cultural values and norms upheld by the society.These general values dynamically arise over a social process in order to consist a certain motivation (Kruglanski et al., 2013).The premise in the significance quest is not gender but being human.Regardless of gender, a human can go for significance quest within social life.
In the study, the quest for significance of adults was also analyzed with regard to marital status.Single participants have been determined to be tended more to the quest of significance than married ones.This result may be related with some aforementioned reasons.Being in the period of emerging adulthood and the next period of most of the single individuals can be explained with the significance quest scores of those groups which were found to be high.Individuals in this period are likely to be in the search of appropriate love and work identities and a worldview.Therefore, it can be said that single individuals make more effort than married individuals in the quest for significance.On the other hand, being able to get married or getting married is a step to feel significant.The institution of marriage is important in many cultures.For instance, more than 90% of the people living in The United States of America prefer to get married at some point of their life (Brubaker & Kimberly, 1993;Myers et al., 2005).Consequently, marriage is an important institution and considered as a precious life goal for an individual in our culture as well.Within this scope, married ones' having lower significance quest scores than single ones can be originating from their fulfilment of a sacred goal as marriage.However, single ones have not yet reached that level and fulfilled the expectations of the society and themselves.They can be feeling the deficiency of significance and in the quest for significance.
In the study, adults whose sleeping patterns are affected by using social media are determined to have higher significance quest than those whose are not.This finding means those using social media for a longer time and, for this reason, having negatively affected sleeping patterns tend more to quest for significance.The individuals using social media extensively can be in the quest for significance in this environment of socialization.When the significant quest activated exceeding other concerns, fulfilment of it becomes a priority (Kruglanski et al., 2014;Kruglanski et al., 2022).Then it is turned into a certain goal which is driving the behavior aimed at gaining significance (Kruglanski et al., 2022).When an individual gets in a search for significance quest in social media or feels significant in social media, it can make keep him online for a longer time, and thus his sleeping pattern may get disturbed.He or she can prefer spending time in social media, which will increase his or her sense of significance, rather than sleeping in the end despite suffering from a disturbed sleeping pattern.Satisfying the activated significance quest through social media, he or she can even leave a physiological need as sleep aside.As a result, it can be claimed that there is a positive correlation between the time spent in social media and the significance quest.Similarly, a positive correlation determined between the significance quest and social media addiction as well.
The significance quest of adults aged 46-55 are found to be lower than that of adults aged 25 or younger and aged 26-35 within the study.This result can also be expressed in that the significance quest of individuals in the emerging adulthood and the young adulthood is higher than that of those in the adulthood.In the study carried out by Webber et al. (2017), a relation between age and the significance quest was determined but it is irrelevant to the quest of significance level according to age.In the aforementioned study, younger suicide bombers were determined to be motivated more with the possibility of gaining significance while older suicide bombers were determined to be motivated more with the opportunity of eradication of significance loss.
Participants of this study are adults who are 18 or older.In other words, those in the group expressed by "25 or younger" are aged 18-25.Arnett (2000) expressed that the individuals in this range of age are in young adulthood period.An individual in this stage is in the struggle for identity formation, having a worldview, trying and making decisions in business and love life.These efforts which are emerged during adolescence become more evident during emerging adulthood.Pursuits and tries of sense of identity and preferences varying in work and love of individuals in these ages make this period an inconstant, special, intense and privileged part of the life.In the study, the higher significance quest of participants who are 25 or younger compared to those aged 46-55 can be associated with explorations of the emerging adulthood period.In a way, one of the qualities pursued during this period can be personal significance or contributing factors to it (e.g., having a decent job).Tendency to behaviors as drug and alcohol use and risky sexual activities is relatively high during the emerging adulthood period (Arnet, 2000;2005).Therefore, it can be inferred that these risky behaviors are due to the sensation seeking.Schumpe et al. (2018) consider the sensation seeking as an extension of the significance quest.Individuals in the period of emerging adulthood try to realize their personal significance through the sensation seeking.This is a period of possibilities in which an individual focuses on self and has the highest tendency for personal freedom and exploration.Individuals in this period are happier and more hopeful compared to other periods (Arnett, 2000;2004).They can be in the pursuit of the significance they desire by the influence of this optimism and hope.(Kruglanski and Bertelsen, 2020).According to Significance Quest Theory (SQT), individual significance loss induces the goal of significance restoration (Kruglanski et al., 2014).Absence of a significant difference between the significance quest of adults according to level of income can originate from having not experienced an economic loss or, even if otherwise, not prioritizing it.
It was determined in the study that there is no statistically significant difference in the significance quest of adults according to educational background.According to Kruglanski et al. (2022), the need for significance refers to the motivation of being socially valuable.It means the desire of an individual to be respected by others.The sense of significance is determined by one's perception of how he is evaluated by others or members of his group.The self-esteem of an individual is typically in parallel with his perception of how he is evaluated by others.Thus, feeling themselves valuable and significant in consideration of their group may be underlying the absence of the difference in the significance quest of participants of the study with regard to educational background.No matter their educational background, individuals who have never suffered a sense or threat of significance loss or encountered with an opportunity for significance gain may not engage in a significance quest.
Some of the findings of the study is about analyzing the relation between the significance quest and variables related to social media use.Adults spending 21 hours or more on social media a week were found to tend more to quest for significance than those spending 14 hours or less.In Digital 2022 Global Overview Report (2022), individuals aged 25-34 are stated to be using social media the most according to the age distribution.They are followed by those aged 18-24.A negative correlation between age and social media use is stated to exist again in the report and it is also mentioned that usage rate decreases as age individuals grow older.As 75% of the participants of this study are in those age groups and high tendency of these groups to quest significance is stated in the previous sections, individuals of this group might find a medium to realize their significance quest in social media.Therefore, high tendency to quest significance of those spending 21 hour or more on social media a week can be originating from realizing quest of significance in social media.
Participants using social media to spend time are found to tend more to quest for significance than those using it to communicate with friends and following the news in the study.According to the responses of social media users on their reason to use social media in Digital 2022 Global Overview Report 2022, 36,5% of them use it to follow recent developments and news, 34,4% of them use it to spend time and 33% of them use it to stay in touch with friends and follow their activities.According to Kruglanski et al. (2022), individual differences in the quest for significance are probably shaped by the way of parenting and socialization practices.Social media becomes more prominent day by day as an environment to socialize today.People try to socialize and tend to quest for significance within this environment.Those using social media to follow the news and communicate with friends can be said to have a clear goal.On the other hand, those using social media to spend time, in a way, quest significance in this environment.This may be the cause of the higher significance quest of those in this group.
In the study, a statistically significant positive correlation at a medium level between means of Significance Quest Scale and Social Media Addiction Scale scores of participants were found.The quest for significance was determined to be a significant predictor of social media addiction of adults.Almost 23% of the total variance related to social media addiction turned out to be explained with the significance quest.People can form a community, share information and content, and get answers to what they share in social media.Thanks to these, social media makes sharing views with ease, making friends with similar views and lifestyle come together to oppose the disagreed ideas.Individuals, who are not able to display those behaviors in real life that easy, can readily do so in social media.The conclusion would be that these individuals try to fulfil their significance quest by displaying those behaviors.
Nobody constantly seeks significance.Even the most ambitious individuals occasionally engage in other needs of leisure, entertainment and relationship irrelevant to significance.The significance quest must be activated firstly to activate a significance.The significance quest, as for other motivations, can be activated through one of two common ways and those are deprivation and incentive.When causes of social media addiction examined the effort of an individual to avoid his true self, in other words, to attain his

Table 1 .
The Significance Quest of Adults According to Gender, Marital Status and Whether Sleeping Patterns of Them is Affected by Using Social Media

Table 2 .
Descriptive Statistics and ANOVA Results Related to The Significance Quest of Adults According to Age Levels Scheffe's Multiple Comparison Test was performed to determine between which groups significant difference exists.Differences between mean scores of adults aged 46-55, and those who are 25 or younger, and those aged 26-35 were found.When mean scores of these groups are examined, mean of the significance quest scores ( ̅ =47.73) of adults aged 46-55 (n=42) are seen to be smaller than ( ̅ =61.48) of adults aged 25 or younger (n=301) and ( ̅ =60.89) of adults aged 26-35 (n=108).Eta-square (η 2 ) correlation coefficient calculated to determine the effect of age level variable on the significance quest of participants was found to be .03.This value of eta-square (η 2 ) yields that the age level variable affects the significance quest of participants at a low level.Accordingly, this can be said that the significance quest of adults aged 46-55 are lower than that of adults aged 25 or younger and aged 26-35.Descriptive statistics and ANOVA results regarding the mean scores of the quest for significance according to the level of income of adults are presented in Table3.

Table 3 .
Descriptive Statistics and ANOVA Results Related to The Significance Quest of Adults According to Level of Income

Table 4 .
As Table4suggests, no statistically significant difference between means of significance quest scores of adults according to educational background was found (F=.40; p>.05).Thus, it can be said that there is no statistically significant difference between quest for significance of adults according to educational background.Descriptive statistics and ANOVA results regarding the mean scores of the quest for significance according to the time spent on social media of adults are presented in Table5.

Table 5 .
Descriptive Statistics and ANOVA Results Related to the Significance Quest of Adults According to the Time Spent on Social Media

Table 6 .
Descriptive Statistics and ANOVA Results Related to the Significance Quest of Adults According to the Reason for Using Social Media

Table 7 .
Correlation Results of the Relation between Quest for Significance of Adults and Social Media Addiction and Results of Simple Linear Regression Analysis Related to Prediction of Social Media Addiction by the Significance Quest Individuals aged 26-35 are seen to have higher quest for significance than those aged 46-55 in the results with regard to the significance quest according to age level.Individuals can also be in the pursuit of partner selection, finding a job or proving himself worthy or promotion if employed during the period of 26-35 following the emerging adulthood period.Therefore, the significance quest which is particularly high during the emerging adulthood period can be said to continue.According to TSI (Turkish Statistical Institute), the average ages for first-marriage of men and women are respectively 27,9 and 25,1 in Turkey as of 2020.Thus, individuals aged 26-35 are in pursuit of life activities as partner selection, finding a job to prepare for marriage.Finding a job and getting married can be stages of an individual to feel significant.The significance quest of the participants aged 26-35 can be high due to this reason.No statistically significant difference between the significance quest of adults according to level of income was found in the study.The study conducted byJasko et al.
(2017) revealed that the people suffering a significant economic loss are more likely to engage in violent extremism.Quest for significance is activated by the loss of significance.Such loss can arise due to instances of individual humiliation.It can originate from a rejection by a desired other, a failure in school or work, victimhood caused by a war or a natural disaster and an economic loss