Abdulselami SARIGÜL, Alican KAYA, Hasan BATMAZ, Mark D. GRIFFITHS
Addicta The Turkish Journal On Addictions - 2026;13(2):254-267
Social media addiction has become an area of increasing research interest over the past decade. Many factors and variables are associated with the development of social media addiction, as well as others that have remained unexplored. Therefore, the present study examined some of these novel factors. More specifically, the study examined whether happiness mediated the association between spiritual transcendence and social media addiction and whether cognitive and affective mindfulness moderated the mediating effect between these variables. Data were collected from 572 young adults (321 females, 251 males) using convenience sampling. Moderated mediation analysis was conducted using Hayes' PROCESS macro. The results indicated that happiness was a mediator in the relationship between spiritual transcendence and social media addiction. Moderated mediation analysis showed that spiritual transcendence directly predicted social media addiction and also predicted it indirectly through its effect on happiness. Moreover, cognitive and affective mindfulness was a moderator in the relationship between spiritual transcendence and social media addiction, and between spiritual transcendence and happiness. The results also showed that the inverse relationship between spiritual transcendence and social media addiction was partially explained by happiness. The findings suggest that (i) higher levels of spiritual transcendence are associated with greater happiness, and (ii) high cognitive and affective mindfulness, along with increased spiritual transcendence, may be helpful in reducing the adverse effects of social media addiction.
