Examining the Relationship between Physical Activity Attitudes, Technology Addiction, and Well-Being in High School Students

Abstract

This study was conducted with the aim of simultaneously describing the patterns among physical activity attitudes, technology addiction, and psychological well-being in high school students and investigating whether these variables differ by gender. Data were collected from a total of 320 participants aged 13–17, located in four different provinces across various regions of Turkey. Data were gathered using the Youth Physical Activity Attitude Scale (YPAAS), the Technology Addiction Scale (TAS), and the Subjective/Psychological Well-Being Scale. Data were analyzed with SPSS 27.0; following checks for normality of distributions, descriptive statistics, independent samples t-tests for gender comparison, and Pearson product-moment correlation were applied for inter-variable relationships. The findings indicate that students' positive physical activity attitudes and psychological well-being generally trend at a moderate level. Components of technology addiction are also found to be at a moderate level, with relatively higher scores observed in the sub-dimensions of social networking and online gaming use. In gender-based comparisons, no significant differences were determined for physical activity attitudes or psychological well-being; however, significant differences were found in some sub-dimensions of technology addiction. Correlation analyses revealed that a positive physical activity attitude is significantly negatively correlated with indicators of technology addiction and positively correlated with psychological well-being. Conversely, negative attitude exhibited relationships in the opposite direction. The findings suggest that in school-based interventions, it may be beneficial to concurrently target components that reinforce physical activity and enhance digital self-regulation.