The role of social skills & emotional intelligence in predicting internet addiction among university students

Introduction: Today internet addiction is considered as a kind of psychological disorder which can cause serious problem for students as a high-risk group. Aim: The purpose of this study was to determine the relationship between social skills and emotional intelligence with internet addiction of students at Piame-Noor University of Alborz Province (Iran). Method: The method was descriptive-correlational. The population of this study included all students of Piame-Noor University of Alborz in 2019 and based on this, 350 students were selected by random cluster sampling. Participants completed Young Internet Addiction Questionnaire (1996), Rigo and Canary Social Skills Questionnaire (2003), and Gelman Emotional Intelligence Questionnaire (2001). Descriptive statistics and multivariate regression analysis were used using SPSS-22 software. Results: The Findings displayed that there was a significant negative relationship between internet addiction and social skills and emotional intelligence (P<0.05). It means that, as students' social skills and emotional intelligence increased, their internet addiction decreased, and it can be true in the opposite way. Moreover, the results of regression analysis indicated that social skills and emotional intelligence were able to significantly predict internet addiction and, 9.3% of the variance in internet addiction was explained by social skills & 4.2% of the variance in internet addiction was explained by emotional intelligence. Conclusion: It can be concluded that as the level of social skills and emotional intelligence in university students increases, the possibility of internet addiction decreases.