Internet addiction antecendants: Self-control as a predictor

Internet addiction is a result of penetration of internet technology to the modern world and has inundated a substantial proportion of human societies, so that many of mental professionals have considered it as amounting threatening issue of mental health. Many factors are suggested to be of capability of predicting internet addiction, include self-efficacy and self control, whose roles are evaluated in this study. This survey study was conducted on 395 female and male university students of SardarJangalUniversity, Rasht, Iran. Instruments comprised Internet Addiction Test, and Self-Control Scale (Tangney, 2004), which were administered by all participants. findings of regression analysis showed that self-control has significant negative relation with internet addiction (p<.05) and male students gained higher scores in internet addiction than females. Moreover, no significant difference was found among students of different university majors in internet addiction scores. It appears that self-control abilities can reduce the rate of internet addiction in university students. Therefore, future programs and plans of tri-layer prevention can focus on teaching for self-control among university students as well as school-ageed students and families to deliberately decrease internet addiction in various sectors of society.