Purposes of internet use among Iranian university students: exploring its relationship with social networking site (SNS) addiction

BACKGROUND: Higher education students are heavy users of the internet for a wide variety of reasons, including Social Networking Sites (SNSs). This study investigated various purposes of internet use among undergraduate university students, and how different categories of such activities are related to SNS addiction. METHODS: The sample set from 420 SNS users (280 females), a survey questionnaire was used to collect the information, including demographic information, purposes for internet usage (social, entertainment, academic, and economic purposes), and SNS addiction. Descriptive statistics, correlation, and a path diagram to estimate the regression coefficients were used to examine the data. RESULTS: Findings revealed that the most common purposes for using the internet were online social networking and information seeking, followed by listening to music or watching movies, learning, relaxing, using email for educational needs, and reading socio-political news. In the comparison between categories of purposes for internet usage, the most prevalent group of purposes were academic and informative, recreational, social, and economic categories respectively. Moreover, the most significant influences belonged to the social group [positively], the academic and informative group (negatively), and the recreational group (positively) on SNS addiction respectively. The economic group of purposes did not have a significant influence on SNS addiction. CONCLUSION: This study has important implications for education and health providers, particularly in universities; we recommend that they try to improve students’ mental health and academic performance by providing opportunities for them to improve their IT literacy and skills. SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION: The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1186/s40359-022-00745-4.