Underlying and Contextual Causes of Internet Addiction Among Students: Presenting a Grounded Theory

There have been numerous Internet opportunities in all aspects of life in the last few decades, but they have been followed by modern and diverse threats, such as Internet addiction. The main purpose of this study is to identify students' experience of Internet addiction. A qualitative method was used in this study and the Grounded Theory was used for data analysis. In-depth and semi-structured interviews were conducted on 25 high school students. The sample size was also based on theoretical saturation and purposive sampling and the findings were validated by outside experts in addition to the analysis and review of the codes. The findings included 55 primary concepts and 9 main themes, namely "Internet addiction as pain-creating sympathizer". The identified main themes were self-avoidance, triple disorders (physical, sexual, and mental), connection management, systematic procrastination, school system repression, de-intimation and multi-dimensional facilitator. Finally, the main themes were formulated within the framework of Strauss and Corbin's five-fold model: underlying causes, contextual factors, intervening conditions, strategies and consequences