The relationship between personality characteristics and internet addiction in adolescents

Introduction: Personality has been identified as a significant factor in internet addiction. The purpose of the present research was to investigate the role of personality factors in the prediction of internet addiction in adolescents.

Materials-Methods: The research subjects consisted of 261 (146 females, 115 males) adolescents from the city of Ardabil. They were selected by using the random clustering method. The data of the Young Internet addiction (IAT) test and the NEO-FFI Personality Inventory were used together. The data were analyzed by Pearson's correlation coefficient and multivariate regression analysis.

Results: The result of the Pearson correlation coefficients showed that there were significant relationships in adolescent girls between neuroticism (r=0.42, P<0.01), extraversion (r=-0.19, P<0.05) and conscientiousness (r=-0.24, P<0.05) and internet addiction. In addition in adolescent boys there were significant relationships between neuroticism (r=0.32, P<0.01), extraversion (r=-0.23, P<0.05), agreeableness (r=-0.24, P<0.05), and conscientiousness (r=-0.17, P<0.05) and internet addiction. The result of multiple regression analysis demonstrated that neuroticism, extraversion, agreeableness, and conscientiousness explained 32 percent of variance of internet addiction in adolescents.

Conclusions: The results were similar to findings in other studies and they indicated that low levels of neuroticism and high levels of extraversion, agreeableness, and conscientiousness decrease internet addiction risk in adolescents.