Metaphor Perceptions of Adolescents Towards the Concept of Social Media

Abstract

The aim of this research is to examine adolescents' perceptions of the concept of social media through metaphors. The study group of the research consisted of 182 high school students studying in the Aegean Region of Turkey in the 2023-2024 academic year. In the research, a questionnaire consisting of two parts prepared by the researchers was used as a data collection tool. The first part of this form included questions about demographic information (gender, age, school, class, etc.). In the second part, “Social media is like … because …” were asked to complete the statement. The data obtained from the research were evaluated by content analysis, one of the qualitative research methods. In the study, 93 metaphors related to the concept of social media were obtained from adolescents. It was determined that the most frequently used metaphors were “book”, “water”, “cigarette”, “teacher”, “chocolate” and “life” metaphors. The created metaphors are divided into conceptual categories and themes. As a result of the positive category, the themes of happiness, need and useful were reached. As a result of the negative category, addiction, time wasting and harmful themes were obtained. In addition, when we look at the content of the meanings that adolescents attribute to social media, it was concluded that 53.28% of them ascribed a positive meaning to the concept of social media, and 31.31% attributed a negative meaning to social media.