Associations Between Online Addiction Attachment Style, Emotion Regulation Depression and Anxiety in General Population Testing the Proposed Diagnostic Criteria for Internet Addiction

Abstract

The focus of this study was twofold. The first aim of the study was to investigate psychometric properties of the Turkish version of the Chen Internet Addiction Scale (CIAS). Second, we explored the relations between Internet Addiction, Attachment Style Emotion Regulation, Depression and Anxiety among college students. A total of 754 college students participated in the study. The CIAS, Young Internet Addiction Test (YIAT), Experiences in Close Relationship-Revised (ECR-R), Difficulties in Emotional Regulation Scale (DERS), Center for Epidemiological Studies Depression Scale (CES-D), Beck Anxiety Inventory (BAI), and WHO Disability Assessment Schedule 2.0 (WHODAS 2.0) were administered in the study. The CIAS was subjected to confirmatory factor analysis. The associations between Internet addiction, attachment styles, difficulty in emotion regulation, anxiety and depression were evaluated using one-way analysis of variance and logistic regression analysis. The signal detection analysis showed that a cut value of 64 for the CIAS, with diagnostic accuracy of 97.1% and a cut value of 40 for the YIAT, with diagnostic accuracy of 86.9% were evaluated to be best diagnostic cutoff points. Considering univariate relationships between variables of interest, fearful and preoccupied attachment were significantly associated with pathological Internet use. Logistic regression analyses demonstrated that being male, difficulties in emotional regulation, anxiety and depression statistically significantly contributed to the risk for development of Internet addiction. Internet addiction as indexed by the CIAS cutoff is a highly debilitating mental disorder. © 2019 Kure Iletisim Grubu A.S. All rights reserved.