Relationship between the Components of Emotional Intelligence and Internet Addiction of Students in Kharazmi University

Internet is regarded as a largely pro-social, interactive, and information-driven medium and its use has skyrocketed and affected everyone’s life, specifically, adolescents and young adults, a generation for whom the line between online and real world interaction is practically non-existent and the existence of addictive internet use may exert detrimental effects on their lives. One of the affecting factors of Internet addiction is the level of emotional intelligence. Therefore, the research purpose is to assess the relationship between the adolescents’ emotional intelligence and Internet addiction disorder (IAD). Hence, the research employed a descriptive, correlative method and the sample comprised 400 students who were selected using stratified sampling form all the faculties located in Kharazmi University. The research tools included Internet Addiction test (IAT) designed and developed by Young and The Schutte Self-Report Emotional Intelligence Test (SSEIT). Results indicated that Internet addiction is significantly, negatively correlated to internet addiction. Moreover, results of multivariate regression indicated that appraisal of others’ emotions explains 10.9% of the total variance. With regard to the disastrous effects of internet addiction, especially during adolescent and young adulthood, and the role of emotional intelligence as the predictor of internet addiction, coherent and effective policies should be formulated and developed for those at risk.