Investigation of Social Anxiety in Users of the Internet and Social Networks

Given the increasing importance of using the Internet and virtual networks, its impact on lifestyle, and computability of this problem with a lot of mental and behavioral disorders, the present paper aims to study social anxiety in users of social and virtual networks.
This comparative study was carried out on a sample of 80 girl students and 99 boy students of high schools based on the multistage random cluster sampling. Young’s Internet Addiction Scale and Conover’s Social Phobia Inventory were used for data collection. The obtained data and information were statistically analyzed by the multivariate analysis of variance (MANOVA).
The results showed that between internet addiction and the use of cyberspace there is a significant positive correlation(r=0/50). The results of MANOVA also indicated a significant difference between three groups of normal users, risky users, and Internet addicts in the extent of social anxiety, fear of social situations (p=0/1, f=4/73), avoidance of social situations (p=0/02, f=6/53), physiological symptoms (p=0/03, f=3/57), Social anxiety disorder (p=0/002, f=6/48).
These findings suggest the Internet addicts show the characteristics of people with social phobia more than normal users.