Relationships among irrational beliefs, inferiority felling and problematic internet usage of university students

First aim of this study was to investigate problematic internet usage level of university students. Secondly, it was aimed to investigate whether problematic internet usage levels of those students differ significantly according to internet usage purposes. Thirdly, it was aimed to examine the contribution of inferiority feelings, irrational beliefs and gender to the prediction of problematic internet usage. The participant of the study was consisted of 1229 university students attending to different faculties of Anadolu University. Data were collected by means of 'Problematic Internet Usage Scale' (Ceyhan, Ceyhan and Gurcan, 2009), 'Irrational Beliefs Scale' (Yurtal, 1999) and 'Inferiority Feelings Scale' (Akdoğan, 2012). Descriptive statistics, One-way ANOVA, Pearson Correlation Analysis, Linear Hierarchical Regression Analysis techniques and KruskalWallis H Test were utilized in data analysis process. Results indicated that, problematic internet usage of participants was low and differed significantly according to internet usage purposes. Students those of whom using internet for social media and playing game have significatly higher scores from problematic internet usage scale than those of whom using internet for academic purposes. According to the regression analysis results discouragement and negation of self value subscales of inferiority feeling scale were the most powerful predictors of problematic internet usage. This was followed orderley by desire for approval, blaming tendency and perfectionism dimensions of irrational beliefs, and being male at last. On the other hand useless superiority effort subscales of inferiority feeling scale, andhigh expectation, emotional irresponsibility, dependency, and helplessnesssubscales of irrational beliefs scale didn't predict problematic internet usage in this study.