Internet Addiction and Its Relation to Emotional Intelligence and Resilience Among a Sample of Egyptian University Students

Introduction: Internet addiction (IA) had recently become the focus of interest to most clinicians and researchers. Indeed, this topic was not thoroughly studied in previous researches. Objectives: The authors of the current study aimed to investigate the rates of IA, understand its demographic and clinical correlates, and illustrate the interplay between IA, emotional intelligence (EI) and resilience among a sample of Egyptian university students. Methods: A total of 400 male and female university students from the Faculty of Medicine and Faculty of Literature, Ain Shams University were included in the current study. Participants were assessed using an informative designed questionnaire for sociodemographic data, Young Internet Addiction Test, The Schutte Self Report Emotional Intelligence Test (SSEIT), and The Resilience Scale (RS). Results: Two hundred eighty-nine (72.2%) participants were labeled the diagnosis of IA with varying degree of severity. Participants with IA scored significantly lower in the total score and all the subscores of SSEIT and RS (P>0.001). A significant negative correlation was found between all the domains of the Internet Addiction Test and both SSEIT and RS total score and all the subscores. By multiple logistic regression analysis, EI (odds ratio=0.81, P>0.001) and resilience (odds ratio=0.91, P=0.002) were the only factors predicting IA. Conclusion: Low scores of EI and resilience could predict the susceptibility to IA, suggesting that treatment strategies enhancing these factors would be of great value to be included in the programs targeted for the management of IA.