Abstract

This study was conducted on college students(N=396) that have better access to the Internet compared to other age groups to examine the relationship between Internet use and social and interpersonal adaptation. For this purpose, subjects were tested for social discomfort, social problem-solving, and interpersonal relationship problems and the responses of the final 380subjects were processed through correlation analysis. In result, Internet use scores have significant static correlation with all sub-indexes of social discomfort and interpersonal relationship problems, manifesting that people with higher Internet use scores lack adaptation to social situations and have more interpersonal problems. Next, people with 20% highest Internet addiction scores and 20% lowest Internet addiction scores were divided into general Internet user group and problematic Internet user group and processed through multivariate analysis. In result, it was found that students in problematic Internet user group had higher social discomfort level, lower social problem-solving skills, and various interpersonal problems compared to students in general Internet user group. Considering the findings of this study,excess use of the Internet can cause people to experience difficulties adjusting to social and interpersonal life as they can lack social problem-solving skills. Therefore, it is necessary to provide appropriate training for social skills. Based on these findings, the limitation and future study topics of this study were also discussed.