We all have behaviors and activities that we like to do in daily life. Although these behaviors, which are different from each other, may seem to do no harm to anyone, they can sometimes turn into a behavior that is harmful to the person himself. So when can we define these everyday behaviors as abnormal? In order for a behavior to be considered abnormal, it must pass certain criteria. These include being unusual, social deviance, faulty perception and interpretation of reality, significant personal distress, maladaptive or self-defeating behavior, and being dangerous. But all of these alone are not enough to call a behavior abnormal. Behaviors that deviate from the norm, disrupt the person's functionality, cause significant distress/emotions in the person, and are harmful to the person or others are considered abnormal. It is also necessary to evaluate the context of the behavior. In other words, the intensity, frequency and continuity of a behavior are also important criteria for abnormality assessment. In summary, abnormal behavior must be incompatible with the context, must be spread over a certain period of time, must be felt intensely and cause serious distress, and there must be deterioration in functionality.
Mobile phones are now among the communication tools that are at the center of our lives. Since it is possible to do anything with a mobile phone with smartphones, the frequency and importance of its use has increased. However, some people, especially young people, regard this tool as exaggeratedly important, as if it were a person's hand or arm. If a person spends more time on the phone than he should normally use (for example, he pays attention to his phone instead of chatting with the other person even when meeting with his friend or while eating), if his functionality is impaired enough to disrupt the work he needs to do in a day (for example, he does not look up from his phone and does not study the course he should study, he is very busy). such as not being able to get up at the required time in the morning due to spending too much time and being sleep deprived, being late for work or school), feeling excessively negative emotions such as anxiety and sadness during the periods when the phone should be separated (this feeling must last for a long time) and excessive phone use ke We can say that it is at the level of abnormal behavior when there is a possibility of physical and/or psychological harm to oneself and/or others. Ünal and Arslan (2013) list the main physical and psychological disorders that occur due to unconscious and excessive use of mobile phones as follows: It causes physical health problems such as headaches, watery eyes, and eye fatigue due to constantly looking at the screen, and with the widespread use of social media and messaging applications. It causes asociality due to talking on smartphones rather than meeting in real life, it causes loss of concentration due to constantly checking the mobile phone, it causes the risk of being drawn into healthy and illegal environments due to easy communication with everyone, it can interfere with people's private lives with spyware, it causes sleep problems. is that it is. Accordingly, although smartphone use is a part of daily life, it can sometimes be defined as abnormal behavior.
Digital and/or online games are one of the technological developments that are increasingly attracting attention, especially among children and young people. If a person plays video games excessively, if he feels negative emotions when he should not play or should stay away, if he cannot perform his daily tasks because of games (going to work, going to school, etc.), if there is a possibility that the person may harm himself and his environment (aggression, substance use, etc.). ) we can consider the behavior as abnormal. Time spent playing digital games is one of the indicators of addiction, and the gaming time of addicts is higher than that of non-addicts. Intensive use of computer games does not affect the person positively but rather negatively in terms of self-esteem, sociability and academic success (Roe and Muijs, 1998). In game preferences, digital games, especially those containing intense violence, can cause psychosocial problems such as loneliness, low life satisfaction, depression or attention problems, etc., while some digital games also reduce fatigue and stress, make free time valuable, take away stress, help people cope with problems. It is stated that it helps increase self-confidence and improves visual-attention skills. ir (Irmak and Erdoğan, 2015).
Social media covers a significant part of users' daily schedules, thanks to its new and unprecedented format, content and communication infrastructure. Sometimes people may exhibit extremely pronounced negative emotions that impair their functionality, such as lack of internet connection or receiving fewer likes. There may even be a possibility of self-harm due to situations on social media, or inaccurate cognitive distortions such as "the more likes I get, the more I am loved" may occur. Such social media use would be abnormal. As people become more busy on social media, they begin to need emotional support more. People's relationships with family and friends are gradually weakening. However, it makes them introverted and dependent on social media (Çiftçi, 2018).
The internet is a tool that we use a lot in daily life and is necessary for communication. However, people can also use the internet abnormally to the extent that they will feel extremely negative emotions in its absence, be harmful to themselves and others (being able to enter people's private spaces, etc.) and impair their functionality (being unable to perform daily tasks). When using the Internet to the point of addiction, it can generally be observed that an individual cannot prevent the desire to use the Internet intensively during the day, does not enjoy life when not connected to the Internet, shows extreme irritability and aggressive behavior when deprived of the Internet, and gradually deteriorates the person's work, social and family life (Young, 2004). .
Eating is one of our basic needs and we all want to meet this need. However, some people sometimes overeat because they associate eating with emotions, sometimes due to negative emotions such as anxiety, fear, and guilt. Sometimes, they may eat less or not at all because their body perception is distorted or they have cognitive distortions, and they feel anxiety and guilt when they eat. We can say that both types are eating abnormally, especially because they harm themselves. These concerns bring along unhealthy eating habits, anorexia nervosa, It can cause eating disorders such as limia nervosa or pica. This body image anxiety that emerges in young people is directly linked to the culture they live in. The perception of beauty adopted by the culture affects individuals in a way that pushes them to comply with it. According to their study by Cohen & Herbert (1996), eating too little or too much can negatively affect body perception and self-esteem, but no significant results were found in its relationship with the social environment.
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