Öz
The technological advancements of this era made the use of Internet an essential part of our lives. It is known that the Internet is used for social media applications at most. It is thought that the use of social media has increased with the effect of decreasing face-to-face socialization due to the COVID-19 pandemic in the period, in which the present study was carried out. The use of social media plays an important role in the socialization and the development of belongingness and self-esteem in online groups but it also brings several threats with it. One of these threats is cyberostracism, which is defined as not belonging to a group in social media, being ignored, and being ostracized. The present study is a cross-sectional one carried out with students studying in the Medical Faculty of Eskişehir Osmangazi University in educational year of 2020-2021. Ethics committee approval was obtained. The study group involved 1092 students. Making use of the literature, a questionnaire form was prepared. The questionnaire was filled out online by students. The data analysis was performed using Mann-Whitney U test, Kruskal Wallis test, Spearman’s Correlation Analysis, and Multiple Linear Regression Analysis. 593 (54.3%) of the students were female. Their ages were ranging between 17 and 27 years and the mean age was found to be 21.6±2.0 years. The scores in the cyberostracism scale range between 14 and 70 points and the mean score was 24.8±9.9 points. The social media applications used most during the day were Instagram, WhatsApp, and YouTube. In advanced analyses, character type, family type, devoting time for hobbies during the day, face-to-face communication with friends, behaviors of parents towards the participant, age of the first use of a smartphone, time of smartphone use in a day, and creating a social media membership by concealing the identity were found to be the predictors of cyberostracism. A negative relationship was found between students’ level of cyberostracism and self-esteem. The increase in the use of internet and social media applications also brought the concept of “digital health” forward. This subject is important for public health. It is recommended to develop intervention programs in order to protect from the harmful effects of social media and decrease cyberostracism