At the start of my research I first wanted to establish what addiction can be defined by in terms of Internet use. An addiction, in itself, can be defined as a devotion to a certain thing or activity that creates a mental and physical dependence for it. In my reading, I was searching for any signs of Internet addiction actually existing as a disorder that impairs people’s daily functioning. One of my articles (Young, 1996) approached Internet addiction by observing pathological gambling which falls under a impulse-control disorder. Research shows that Internet addiction has not been established as a disorder however they did find similar indications of an impulse-control disorder. For example, among two groups of people (dependent and non-dependent) studied, users who are newly exposed to the Internet will become addicted faster. Also, those users who are dependent spend eight times the number of hours online than non-dependents. This study pointed out that the more interactive an application is, the more likely it is to be addicting. Also, misunderstood/lonely people might be more prone to seek virtual interactions with others because they do not know how to effectively interact in person.
Another study by Caplan in 2003 describes college students’ preference for online social interaction. The article explains how the Internet alone does not cause people to be isolated, but rather it is feelings of loneliness or depression that attracts people to online social interaction. One researcher (Davis, 2000) theorized the following: individuals with psychosocial problems have negative social competence which leads to a preference for online social interaction which leads to an excessive/compulsive dependence on computer mediated communication. This dependence only creates more solitude for these people, which leads to more feelings of loneliness and depression (Davis, 2000). In this way, Internet use becomes a cycle of dependence in which many people cannot live healthily with it nor without it. Schumacher (2000) describes the Internet as the “Prozac of social communication,” where its features are incredibly liberating in terms of anonymity and openness. Issues that arise from college students’ necessity for the Internet include job recruitment, identity formation, and development of social skills. A study (Anderson, 2001) about college students shows that Internet use often may lead to a decline in social involvement and an increase of depression.
As a whole, college students are definitely more vulnerable to Internet addiction because they are almost always guaranteed access to a computer and the web. My sample of people were college students 18-25 years old, with more than half being female. On a scale of how satisfied (1-4) people were with having certain time limits for internet use, an average of 3.4 satisfaction was reported for 2+ hours a day of using the internet use. Average satisfaction for 20 min per day was 1.5. It was interesting because when I asked if people use the Internet more, less or exactly than they intended to 87.9 % reported using the Internet more.
Chart One
I found this question in particular to be very fascinating because I was not expecting 28.8% of my sample to rely on the Internet as a way of escape from daily stressors. The fact that almost half of the sample used the Internet for networking and keeping connections was not surprising however.
When I asked students to share what websites/applications they used the most online and why, 84% used Facebook and the most common reason was for keeping up with friends which makes sense given the analysis of my first chart. As our generation is considered a bunch of “millenials” we have grown to integrate social networking into our daily routine as if it were second nature to us. Many students have grown so used to tending to their friends via social networks that they have forgotten that healthy relationships require face-to-face interaction.
Chart Two
I predicted that addicting and loss of social skills would be two of the most chosen negative factors, but to my surprise cyberbullying was higher than loss of social skills. From the sample 57.6% perceived addiction as the worst quality of the Internet. I think these findings are quite accurate of college students considering that we have interactive roles in social networking where we make it a habit to log in to our Facebook everyday simply to keep up with the latest posts and photo sharing. In accordance with findings in Young’s (1996) article about Internet addiction, the more interactive an application, in this case Facebook, the more likely it is to be addictive to the user. Most of the college students reported using the Internet primarily for means of communication with friends which puts much emphasis on the social interaction.
Chart Three
According to my survey, 33.3% of college students use the Internet 12-16 hrs per week which was quite close to the 28.8% who use the Internet more than 20 hrs per week.Compared to the Internet use as college students, 53% of my sample reported using the Internet only 7-12 hours per week as high school students. Even though this was less than when in college, I expected the the percentage of students who use the Internet for more than 20 hours per week to be much higher. One interesting study by Anderson (2001) indicates that certain college majors may be more Internet dependent. Results of this study showed that hard science majors spent more time online than arts & sciences or liberal arts majors. I found this to be quite interesting considering that there are often debates between students in regards to which majors are more academically demanding vs. time consuming and “book heavy” vs.” online research heavy”.
My research also showed that in addition to academics a large number of students work an average of 14 hours per week, exercise about 5 hrs/week, and dedicate about 4 hrs to Greek life. Among these activities some of the others mentioned were interning, volunteering, and being involved in clubs.