Teaching Metacognitive strategies on Metacognitive Behavior and Internet Self-Efficacy of Female Students at Risk of Internet Addiction during the COVID-19

Adolescents, for whom the Internet is an indispensable part of their daily life, are the most significant group at risk of Internet addiction. The objective of this study was to investigate the effectiveness of metacognitive strategies on metacognitive behavior and internet self-efficacy of female students at risk of Internet addiction during the COVID-19.

    The present research was quasi-experimental with pretest-posttest design with a control group. The statistics population for the academic year 2020-2021 comprised all secondary schools' females in Tehran's 15 district. In this study, purposeful sampling process was applied. Primarily, one school (Ebne Sina) was randomly selected from the secondary schools of region 15 in Tehran, in the second grade. Three classes were chosen from each grade in the form of Lottery and among 360 students, 30 students who were most at risk for internet addiction were randomly selected and assigned in the experimental (n=15) and control (n=15) groups via shad application. The experimental group received metacognitive strategies training for 8 treatment sessions (90 minutes for each session). The data were analyzed with SPSS-23 and  analysis of covariance (ANCOVA). 

Mean and SD of age in the Transactional Analysis and the control groups were 15.87 ± 0.734 and 16±0.816, respectively. Moreover, our findings showed that the experimental and control groups differ significantly in their metacognitive behavior (p =0.01and F=55.349) and internet use self-efficacy during pretest control (p =0.01 and F=43.573).

The result of our study showed that metacognitive strategies had significant effects on Metacognitive Behavior and Internet self-efficacy of female students at risk of Internet addiction during the COVID-19.  Therefore, psychological group therapy could be suggested to improve metacognitive behavior and increase internet self-efficacy and thus reduce behavioral and social damages.