Predicting internet addiction based on social skills & mental security among university students

Internet addiction among university students is affected by various psychological factors that include social skills and mental security.

The aim of this study was to determine the relationship between students' social skills and psychological security with internet addiction and also to predict internet addiction based on social skills and psychological security of Payam-Noor University students.

The method of this study was descriptive- correlational. The population was all Payam-Noor university students in Tehran who were students in 2019. The sample of this study included 250 university students who were selected through random cluster sampling. In addition to demographic questionnaire, Young internet addiction questionnaire (1996), Matson social skills questionnaire (1983) & Maslow mental security (2004) were used. Descriptive statistics indices (mean and standard deviation) and multivariate regression analysis were used for data analysis by SPSS-22 software.

The results indicated that there was a significant relationship between internet addiction with social skills & mental security among university students (P<0.05). Moreover, 8.7% of the variance in internet addiction was explained by social skills & 2.3% of the variance in internet addiction was explained by mental security.

To conclude, it seems that the level of social skills and high psychological security has a positive and significant relationship with the reduction of internet addiction and it can predict reduction of internet addiction.