Abstract:

Social networks provide an environment for virtual communication and play a key and ever growing role in quality of mental health. Emotional maturity is a key effective element of emotions control, behavior, and improvement of mental health. The present paper is aimed at surveying the relationship between addiction to social networks and emotional maturity of students. A descriptive analytical study was carried with participation of 181 students in the Faculty of Medical Science, Shoushtar, Iran in 2016; the participants were selected through random sampling. Data gathering tool was a researcher-designed questionnaire of addiction to social network and Yashvir Singh & Bahargava’s Emotional Maturity Scale. The collected data were analyzed in SPSS (16).As the results showed, people with severe addiction to social networks had lower scores in terms of general emotional maturity and its subscales comparing with those with moderate addiction to social networks (p<0.001). Gender had no significant effect on the level of addiction to social networks (p = 0.347). Except for the subscale emotional stability, which was identical between two genders, women had better scores in terms of general emotional maturity and the subscales. Level of severity of addiction to social networks was related to emotional maturity of individuals. This relationship can be taken into account in preventing and treating addiction to social networks.

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