The Relation Between Emotional Intelligence and Internet Addiction in Katowice High School Students.

Background: Emotional intelligence (EI) is described as the capacity to be aware of, control, and express one's emotions, and to handle interpersonal relationships judiciously and empathetically. It is considered as one of the most important predictors of success, quality of relationships, and overall happiness. Dynamically changing environment of the youth and young adults in recent years may influence their EI development, affecting their lives significantly. The purpose of this study was to analyse the way how the Internet is used by high school students, to determine the amount of time they spend on the Internet, identify the level of EI and to explore if there is any correlation between those factors.

Subjects And Methods: 1450 high school students from Katowice, at the age from 18 to 21 years took part in an anonymous survey consisting of three parts: The Trait Emotional Intelligence Questionnaire - Short Form (TEIQue-SF), Internet Addiction Test and authorial test giving information about the way of spending time online. The questionnaires were collected from May 2018 to January 2019.

Results: 1.03% of the respondents fulfilled the Internet addiction criteria. Students at risk for addiction (33.5%) turned out to be a larger group. A statistically significant correlation between TEIQue-SF and Internet Addiction Test score (P<0.0001, r=-0.3308) was observed. Another significant correlation was found between TEIQue-SF score and amount of time spend on the Internet (p<0.0001, r=-0.162).

Conclusion: A significant part of high school students used Internet excessively. Such behaviours were positively correlated with lower EI test results.