The Relationship between Emotional Intelligence andTechnology Addiction among University Students

Abstract

Introduction: Today the prevalence of Internet addiction in youth could be a serious crisis as tantamount as drug addiction in personal life, family relationships, social behavior and academic status. Studies show that there is a positive relationship between emotional intelligence and social skills. Emotional intelligence includes understanding, reasoning and handling our emotion. Non-cognitive skills enable us to get success in dealing with environmental conditions. The vulnerability of high emotional intelligent person is much more than others; the aim of this study was examining the relationship between Internet addiction, virtual environments and emotional intelligence. Methods: This cross–sectional survey was conducted on 201 students who were randomly selected. The survey instrument was a triploid questionnaire: demographic information including age, sex, etc.,Young's Internet Addiction Test (IAT), which contains 20 questions about symptoms of Internet addiction graded by Likert scale score of 1 (never) to grade 5 (always), emotional intelligence questionnaire including 33 questions (Schutte 1997) about three categories of emotion: perception, planning and productivity. The data analyzed by computer software SPSS 16 (ANOVA, 95% confidence). Results: According to findings of this study, %38.3 of students is Internet addicted in general, %43.8 had mild dependency, %15.9 depended to medium and %2 had severe dependency. The average score of emotional intelligence among college students was %118.99 with a standard deviation of 21.12. There was an inverse relationship between the severity of Internet addiction and emotional intelligence.