Developing and Validating the Media Literacy Training Program and Determining its Effectiveness on Reducing Internet Addiction and Improving the Quality of Life of Karaj Teenagers

The purpose of this study was to develop and validate a media literacy training program and determine its effectiveness in reducing Internet addiction and improving the quality of life of teenagers in Karaj. In the present study, the development of the educational program, the qualitative part and the evaluation of the effectiveness of the educational program had a quantitative part. In the qualitative part, it was a type of thematic analysis with a sequential exploratory design and in a quantitative part, it was a semi-experimental type with a pre-test-post-test design with a control group. The statistical population included teenager students aged 15 to18 years in Karaj in 1397, which was a sample of 400 teenagers who were diagnosed with Internet addiction using the Internet Addiction Questionnaire, of which 40 were randomly selected and randomly assigned to the experimental and control groups. For the teenagers in the experimental group, a media literacy training program was conducted in 10 sessions, each session lasting one hour. Data analysis was performed using multivariate and univariate analysis of covariance. The results showed that media literacy training significantly reduced Internet addiction in the experimental group participants. Education also had a significant effect on quality of life and its components; But in the components of social functioning, emotional problems and physical pain were not significantly effective. Based on the findings of the present study, it can be concluded that the media literacy training program can be used as an effective intervention to reduce Internet addiction and increase the quality of life of teenagers