The relationship of depression, distress tolerance and difficulty in emotional regulation with addiction to cell-phone use in students of Kashan University

Cell phone plays an essential role in communications throughout the world. This question has been raised whether the over use of the cell-phone could lead to addiction. Addiction to cell phone use is characterized by the overuse and preoccupation with the mobile phone. So, the aim of this study was to investigate the relationship of depression, distress tolerance and difficulty in emotional regulation with addiction to cell-phone use in students of Kashan University. In this analytical-descriptive study, 200 students of Kashan University in the academic year 2016-2017 were selected by the cluster sampling method. The research tools included the cell-phone over-use scale (COS, 2007(, Beck depression inventory (BDI), difficulty in emotion regulation scale (DERS), and distress tolerance scale (DTS). The results of the regression analysis showed that depression, distress tolerance and difficulty in emotional regulation explained more than 33% of the changes in addiction to cell-phone use. Also, there was a significant correlation between depression and addiction to cell-phone use (r=0.22, P<0.05). In addition, there was a significant correlation between distress tolerance (r=-0.47, P<0.05) and difficulty in emotion regulation (r=0.50, P<0.05) with cell-phone addiction in Kashan University students. According to the results of this study, addiction to cell-phone use can be predicted by three variables of depression, distress tolerance, and difficulty in emotion regulation. The difficulty in emotion regulation played a stronger role in this prediction.