Use and abuse of the Internet in university students

Aim: To adapt a questionnaire for assessing the use and abuse of Internet, as well as the relationship between this resource and psychosocial profile in a group of university students. Method: 391 students filled out the questionnaires; 26.1% were men and 73.9% were women, with a mean age of 19.59 years (DT = +/- 2.83; Range: 18-47 years). We used a sociodemographic questionnaire, Social skills questionnaire (Caballo, 1993, EMES-C and EMES-M), Personality questionnaire (E.P.I., Eysenck and Eysenck, 1982), and an Internet and Use and Abuse of Internet questionnaire (adapted from Bruner, 1997, Suler, 1996 and Young, 1996a, Garcia del Castillo y Terol, 2007). Results: 73.91% of students connect for an average of 84.81 minutes (DT = +/- 2.05) per week. Except for one subscale of the Internet use and abuse questionnaire, all the subscales showed reliability coefficients >=.70 and mean scores lower than the average of the score range. Internet use and abuse showed a relationship with psychosocial variables such as cognitive social skills (r = .14; p = .016) and neuroticism (r = .-13, p = .01).