The relationship between Internet dependence and the tendency to sink and be absorbed in the virtual environment among Internet users in Ferdous and Sarayan cities in 1990-1991

Academic Thesis

To obtain a Master's degree (M.A)

Clinical Orientation Psychology

Abstract

Introduction and purpose: Internet addiction is a new and pervasive problem that has been the focus of researchers and experts on social issues in recent years as a behavioral addiction. The purpose of this research is to predict internet addiction based on two personality traits: attraction, immersion, age, gender, and marriage. Materials and methods: The research method used in this research is descriptive (non-experimental) using correlation method and data collection method is questionnaire. The statistical population of the research was 308 people selected and conducted according to gender and marriage in four groups of women, girls, men and boys of different ages from Internet users in the cities of Ferdous and Sarayan in the spring of 2013 through the available sampling method. The research tools include Young's internet addiction, drowning and absorption questionnaire. Findings: The findings showed that there is a significant relationship between Internet addiction and the tendency to drown. The null hypothesis is rejected and with 0.99 confidence we conclude that there is a linear relationship between Internet addiction and drowning. There is a significant relationship between Internet addiction and the tendency to be absorbed. There is a linear relationship between the component of dreaming and other states of consciousness from the Telgen absorption scale, there is a significant relationship between Internet addiction and age, the correlation coefficient calculated is significant at the level of less than one thousandth. The hypothesis is accepted. The obtained correlation coefficient indicates a significant negative correlation between Internet addiction and age. Also, the existence of a relationship between Internet addiction and gender, marriage, and the relationship between the two showed that marital status and gender are effective on Internet addiction, but marital status has no effect on it. The male gender group has the greatest effect. Conclusion: The findings of this research indicate the effect of some factors such as marriage, gender, age, immersion, and absorption on Internet addiction. According to the obtained results, it is recommended to formulate effective educational programs and try to solve the problems of young people in order to limit the growth of Internet addiction among users.

Introduction

The Internet is a wide global network that connects different computer networks of various sizes and even personal computers using different hardware and software and with communication contracts. This global network connects personal computers or computer networks to each other through telephone lines, and by assigning specific electronic addresses to each of them, it provides fast and extensive communication among all those who are connected to the network, and enables the exchange of information between them in the form of text, sound, image, and video (Dehghan, 2014). It can be said that the Internet is like a virtual meeting place for citizens of the world. is a public meeting point where millions of people from more than 155 countries connect with each other. It is a huge organization whose order is somewhat prearranged. In each of them, they learn about different issues, talk, play, trade, scientific research, view different images, listen to sounds, songs, watch movies and many other actions. The Internet is not a database, but it is the most extensive and important computer network in the world and may be a prototype of the information highways of the first quarter of the 21st century. The Internet can be considered as a reservoir of good, bad, ugly, beautiful, moral and other moral information (Davr Panah, 2012).

The most interesting philosophical phenomenon that the Internet has made possible so far is a virtual world called "Second Life". Second life also provides the possibility of living and spending time in a virtual world, which may be much more exciting than the real world (Farsinejad, 1389).

However, the Internet and the virtual worlds that it has created offer us opportunities to escape on a much larger scale. In fact, thanks to virtual worlds like Second Life, we can forget our limitations and immerse ourselves in a safe and rich world. In this way, we reach a crossroads and have to choose our world (same source).

Some have been worried about the effects of living in a virtual world for a long time.Some of its effects may be mental, such as addiction, and some may be physical (physical) such as dizziness (Baratzadeh, 2012).

Therefore, the virtual environment or cyberspace [1] is an environment created by the computer systems of the world network. Today, the term virtual environment is widely used for the Internet. William Gibson, who for the first time used this term, described it as follows: the complete drowning of human feelings artificially in a fertile environment. In such an environment, the machine creates a human sensory experience and this sense is cultivated in the human brain (Davrpanah, 2012).

1-2- Statement of the problem

Access to the Internet is a growing phenomenon and every day more and more people are included in the category of users. Currently, and according to the number of statistics available in the last few years, the number of Internet users in our country has increased 25 times and more than 0.64 of Iranian users are at home. They use the Internet. This issue shows the widespread desire to use this information tool (Ershlo, 2015). Ivan Goldberg, a psychiatrist from Columbia University, first proposed the internet addiction disorder in July 1995, coined the term internet addiction and recorded its diagnostic criteria (Shaygh et al., 2008). Although Internet addiction was first mentioned in 1995, the scientific community was already familiar with concepts such as technology addiction, computer addiction, and computer game addiction. In fact, the idea that computer use may become a compulsive habit or even an addictive and unstoppable behavior was formed in the 1970s (Atesh Puro et al., 2004). There are many statistics about the prevalence of Internet addiction in different societies, but on average, the proportion of addicts is estimated to be about 2 to 5 million for every 50 million regular users, in other words, it can be said that approximately 5 to 10 percent of Internet users have the problem of Internet addiction (Alavi et al., 2018). Addiction means a situation in which people become physically and mentally dependent on a specific substance, especially drugs. Many researchers use the concept of addiction to justify certain types of suspicious behavior because the findings and symptoms of addiction are classified as behavioral addictions. Therefore, Internet addiction is also considered a behavioral addiction (Dargahi and Razavi, 2016). Users may become addicted to different parts of the Internet such as chat or other types (Weizshaffer, 2016). Internet addiction has been associated with social phobia and Internet addiction with social phobia and attention deficit disorder along with hyperactivity, bipolar disorder, problems in interpersonal relationships, anxiety and impulse disorder, suicide and aggression, depression and high arousal (Khwaje Moghi, 2019).

Attraction means turning attention and being deeply involved with the subject combined with imperviousness to events that usually attract a person's attention. do However, the information is evaluated in an unusual and unique way. During absorption, terrain events and surrounding disturbances are ignored. In this case, the person is impervious to disturbing factors. Of course, according to Roach and McConkey[2] (1990), a person who is attracted to something may ignore the events around him, but at the same time be aware of them, and they add that attraction can be considered as a context (attribute) or an experience (state). Although the trait aspect of absorption has been well studied, absorption as a state has not been well studied. Someone who is high in this vein and quality may be mesmerized by the sunset for a long time and stare at the spots for a long time. In this case, the person is attracted to the usually unconventional and subjective aspects of what he pays attention to. This perceptual or imaginary subject takes the person's attention and is considered present and real. Tellgen [3] (1982) in explaining the concept of attraction refers to the opinion of Maslow [4] (1968) and the concept of enchantment and attraction which is the characteristic of peak experiences. Such experiences mean moments that are valuable in themselves. Absorption is the result of all-round attention, that is, the complete involvement of perceptual, motor, imaginative and cognitive resources in the appearance of units of the thing that is being paid attention to. Absorption is a characteristic and a stable personality trait, and no difference has been observed between the two sexes in this trait (Telgen et al., 1988, Panahi Shahri, 2018). The Oxford dictionary defines drowning as: "to sink into water, other liquids, or other things, and to be absorbed in some circumstance, action, interest, etc."