The Effectiveness of a Cognitive-Behavioral Prevention Program for Internet Addiction

This study assessed the effectiveness of a cognitive-behavioral prevention program for internet addiction. The participants consisted of 52 high school students who were at risk of internet addiction. The study was conducted with two experimental and two control groups. An 8-session cognitive-behavioral psycho-education program for the prevention of internet addiction was implemented in experimental group 1 and experimental group 2. In addition, a 4-session parent psycho-education program was implemented only for the parents of experimental group 1 in order to information on how to prevent internet addiction in adolescents and how to improve parent-adolescent relationships. In the analysis of the data, repeated-measures ANOVA and independent samples t-test were used. The results indicated that there was a significant decrease in the Young Internet Addiction Test and Online Cognition Scale scores of the experimental group 1 and experimental group 2. There was also a greater decrease in the Young Internet Addiction Test scores of the experimental group 1 whose parents also participated in the parent psycho-education program. Based on the findings, it was recommended that mental health professionals should be enlightened on how to use the cognitive-behavioral approach for the prevention of internet addiction in adolescents.