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The Effects of Personal Susceptibility and Social Support on Internet Addiction: an Application of Adler’s Theory of Individual Psychology

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Abstract

The aim of the present study was to examine the addictive effects of personal susceptibility and social support from family, friends, and significant other on Internet addiction. In this study, 207 medical students completed the UCLA Loneliness Scale, the Academic Expectations Stress Inventory, the Multidimensional Scale of Perceived Social Support, and the Young’s Diagnostic Questionnaire for Internet addiction. Participants were recruited via simple random sampling technique. Personal susceptibility variables such as loneliness, academic stress due to other expectations, and academic stress due to self-expectations were significantly positively correlated to, and all domains of social support were significantly negatively correlated to, Internet addiction. After adjusting for demographic variables, social support emerged as a significant predictor of Internet addiction in the hierarchical regression analysis. In support of Adler’s individual psychology theory, the present findings suggest that social support from family is a valuable adjunct to prevention and intervention programs aimed at alleviating Internet addiction in medical students.

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Acknowledgements

The author is grateful to Mohd Saifullah Mohd Arif Kor, Nur Amalina Tukiman, and Nurul Amyrah Che Ahmad Kamily for their help with data collection; Nor Sheereen Zulkefly, Normala Ibrahim, Firdaus Mukhtar, and Sherina Mohd Sidik for their comments on an earlier draft of this article.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Psychiatry, Faculty of Medicine and Health Sciences, Universiti Putra Malaysia, 43400 UPM, Serdang, Selangor Darul Ehsan, Malaysia

    Kit-Aun Tan

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Correspondence to Kit-Aun Tan.

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All procedures performed in studies involving human participants were in accordance with the ethical standards of the institutional and/or national research committee and with the 1964 Helsinki declaration and its later amendments or comparable ethical standards.

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The author declares that there are no conflicts of interest.

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Informed consent was obtained from all individual participants included in the study.

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Tan, KA. The Effects of Personal Susceptibility and Social Support on Internet Addiction: an Application of Adler’s Theory of Individual Psychology. Int J Ment Health Addiction 17, 806–816 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11469-018-9871-2

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11469-018-9871-2

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