The Role of Social Skills in Medical Students' Internet Addiction through the Mediation of Self-efficacy

Considering the prevalence of Internet addiction and its negative consequences and the importance of social skills and self-efficacy, the present study was conducted to determine the role of social skills in Internet addiction of medical students through self-efficacy.

The present study was a descriptive-correlation of structural equations. The statistical population of this study included all male and female medical students of Tehran Azad University of Medical Sciences in the academic year 2018-2019, from which 120 qualified volunteers were selected by convenience sampling. The research instruments were Keramatichr('39')s (2007) Social Skills Questionnaire, Scherer et al. (1982) General Self-Efficacy Questionnaire, and Youngchr('39')s (1999) Internet Addiction. Structural modeling, partial least squares algorithm (PLS), and software (SPSS) version 24 were used to analyze the data.

Mean and standard deviation of social skills variables were 45.33 ± 8.010, self-efficacy was 59.28 ± 13.487 and internet addiction was 82.16 ± 18.867. The results showed that there was a direct and significant relationship between social skills with Internet addiction (r = -0.492) and self-efficacy with Internet addiction (r = -0.463) (P <0.01). The results also showed that self-efficacy plays a mediating role in the relationship between social skills and studentschr('39') Internet addiction.

Considering the effect of social skills and self-efficacy on medical students chr('39')Internet addiction, it seems that by strengthening social skills and self-efficacy, medical studentschr('39') Internet addiction can be reduced.