A Review on the Impact of Internet Addiction on Life

Satisfaction and Life Engagement in Young Adults

Keywords: Internet Addiction, Internet Use, Life Satisfaction, Life Engagement

Today, internet has become a huge part of our life. If we take a look around us in the room or
even at a restaurant or any public space, it’s very easy for us to notice that almost everyone is
engaged with their smartphones or some other electronic device. Undoubtedly the advent of
internet has eased life a lot for humans today, so much so that we can easily navigate to an
unknown area confidently and try on new things in our life without any hesitation. But, as it’s
said – too much of anything is never good; and thus we are here watching ourselves becoming
dependent on the internet so much so, that we can’t even imagine our existence without it. In
recent years, the use of Internet has skyrocketed and affected everyone’s life, specifically,
adolescents and young adults, a generation for whom the line between online and real world
interaction is practically non-existent and the existence of addictive Internet use may exert
detrimental effects on their lives. A review of various researches which have been conducted in
China, Hong Kong, USA and other countries provide with evidence that Internet addiction (IA)
has strong correlation with life satisfaction, though not many studies have been conducted to
assess the impact of IA on Life Engagement of internet users.

IA- Young found that respondents could be classified as "Internet dependent," who displayed an
array of addictive behaviors including tolerance, loss of control, withdrawal, and impairment of
functioning. Among these identified individuals, negative academic, financial, occupational,
physical problems, social isolation, familial and psychological problems have all been identified
as a consequence of excessive Internet use.

Life Satisfaction- It is an overall assessment of feelings and attitudes about one’s life at a
particular point in time ranging from negative to positive. It is the way a person perceives how
his or her life has been and how they feel about where it is going in the future. Shin and Johnson
define life satisfaction as "a global assessment of a person's quality of life according to his
chosen criteria".

Life Engagement- It refers to the purpose in life, to the engagement in behavior that sustains life.
It is defined in terms of the extent to which a person engages in activities that are valued.

The present study examined the impact of Internet Addiction (IA) on life satisfaction and life
engagement in young adults. For the purpose of the study, the researchers selected 210 university
students (both undergraduate and graduate students from University of Dhaka; 117- females and
93 - males) with age ranging between 22 to 25 years. In view of the age range of this group, it
can be assumed that IA can be a serious risk for university students and it can significantly
hamper their quality of life considering various factors like free and unlimited Internet access,
long periods of unstructured time, newly experienced freedom from parental control, no
monitoring or censoring of what they say or do online, social intimidation and alienation etc.

Thus, the present study was designed to answer the questions:

(a) Does Internet addiction affect life satisfaction of Internet addicts?

(b) Does Internet addiction disturb their life engagement?

Based on the past findings, the researchers hypothesized that Internet addiction would have
negative impact on life satisfaction and life engagement.

For the purpose of the study the researchers used the following tools / measures-

1. Survey of internet use - Participants filled out a questionnaire including items about
how long they are using Internet, how many times they use Internet per day, how long
they spent on the Internet per day, what kind of activities they perform and what kind of
sites they use on the Internet.

2. Internet Addiction Test – The 18 item Bangla version of the Internet Addiction Test
(IAT), originally developed as a 20 item questionnaire by Young (1998) has been used
with a 6-point response format ranging from 0 (does not apply) to 5 (always). In this, the
minimal users’ score fall in the range of 18-44, the moderate users’ scores fall in the
range of 45-71 and the excessive users’ scores fall in the range of 72-90.
(Minimal users are the average online users who have complete control over their
Internet usage. Moderate users are those experiencing occasional or frequent problems
due to Internet usage. Excessive users are those having significant problems caused by
Internet usage.)

3. Satisfaction With Life Scale - The Bangla version of the Satisfaction with Life Scale
(SWLS) was used to measure global cognitive judgments of participant’s life satisfaction.
A 5-item SWLS, originally developed by Diener et al., is a 7-point Likert type scale.
Individuals on the SWLS can be classified as extremely dissatisfied (5 – 9), dissatisfied
(10 – 14), slightly dissatisfied (15 – 19), neutral (20), slightly satisfied (21 – 25), satisfied
(26 – 30), and extremely satisfied (31 – 35).

4. Life Engagement Test - The Bangla version of the Life Engagement Test (LET) was
designed to measure purpose in life. The 6-item LET, originally developed by Scheier et
al., is a 5-point Likert type scale ranging from 1 (strongly disagree) to 5 (strongly agree).
Higher scores indicate more life engagement.

The obtained data were analyzed in multivariate regression using Internet addiction as a
predictor and life satisfaction and life engagement as the criterion variables. The multivariate test
result shows that the Pillai’s Trace (.088) was statistically significant (F2,207=9.959, p<.001). The
univariate test result shows that the overall model is significant with both life satisfaction (F =
19.142, p = .001) and life engagement (F = 7.123, p<.05). Estimates indicate that the
respondents’ Internet addiction was significantly and negatively associated with life satisfaction
(p<.001) and life engagement (p<.05) as one unit increase in raw score of Internet addiction
leads to .168 unit decrease in raw score of life satisfaction and .066 unit decrease in raw score of
life engagement. Thus, the results indicate that life satisfaction and life engagement can be
predicted by Internet addiction.

The data analysis also threw light upon the following results:

1. The mean ‘Internet addiction’ score was highest for online discussion (M=27.29,
SD=12.95) followed by the means for adult chatting (M=21.64), online gaming
 (M=19.39), cyber affair (M=19.33), watching pornography (M=18.64), emailing
(M=17.71), downloading (M=17.38) and searching (M=16.48).

2. The mean scores across the different dimensions of internet usage (like neglect of duty,
online dependency, virtual fantasy, privacy etc.) were the highest for online discussion,
followed by other uses like cyber affair, online gaming, chatting and watching
pornography.

3. Analysis of data across different types of Social Networking Sites (SNS) further indicate
that people who frequently participate in Skype, Twitter and Facebook have relatively
higher IA scores and high scores across its dimensions as well.

4. Pearson’s product moment correlations were calculated in order to examine the

relationship of different aspects of Internet use (duration of use, frequency of use, time
spent per day) with Internet addiction, life satisfaction and life engagement. Internet
addiction was found to correlate significantly with duration of use (r=.25, p<.01),
frequency of use (r=.25, p<.01) and time spent online per day (r=.26, p<.01). However,
no significant correlations were found between internet use and life satisfaction and life
engagement.

The results of the study support the hypotheses that internet addiction would have negative
impact on life satisfaction and life engagement in young adults. The researchers explain this
result with the reason that people who are satisfied with their life are able to make them engaged
to identify the purposes of life. If their satisfaction level is hampered by the addiction to Internet,
it is difficult for them to engage in activities that sustain their life and make it purposeful. So, the
assumption that Internet addicts would have poor life satisfaction, which, in turn, would lead to
decreased life engagement, is supported by the present findings. As a result, students tend to
suffer from physical problems, social isolation, familial, psychological problems (depression,
ADHD) and academic problems which have all been identified as a consequence of Internet
addiction. All these things impair people’s cognitive judgment of satisfaction because people’s
quality of life tends to be a direct function of their evaluations of important life domains such as
social support, leisure activities, and standard of living of overall life. Also, being online for long
time destructs people to focus on valued goals of their life. Thus, their life satisfaction level
becomes poor and they find difficulty to be engaged in life.

Researchers claim that the more interactive an Internet function was, the more addictive it would
be to the users. This is consistent with the research findings as the most commonly given
purposes of Internet use associated with the scores on Internet addiction and its dimensions in the
present study were online discussion, adult chatting, online gaming, chatting, cyber affair and
watching pornography and the least given purposes were searching, downloading and emailing.

As the technological advancement of Internet has made significant changes in how people live,
behave and interact, people prefer to get their daily share of news/information by looking at
stories and updates posted by friends or colleagues and relatives on different social media (e.g.,
Skype, Twitter and Facebook). By using these sites people can instantly share their feelings,
thoughts, ideas, interests, documents and even photos/pictures with other people who are far
away geographically. People addicted to these activities and sites display more neglect of duty,
dependence online and live in virtual world more than real world as shown indicated by the data
analysis for the kind of social networking sites used (FB, Twitter, Skype, etc.).
However, this study has some limitations. First, the study was conducted with a moderate
number of participants (n=210). Second, the sample was chosen conveniently only from the
University of Dhaka. So, the findings cannot be generalized to the other Internet user groups.
Third, this study focused on the impact of Internet addiction on life satisfaction and life
engagement without addressing the possibility that other variables might also influence all these
two variables. Finally, the questionnaires were self-reported. It was therefore possible that some
participants might not give their accurate response about their Internet addictions due to
restricted social norms.

Despite these limitations the findings of the present study advance our understanding of the
nature of Internet addiction and its impacts on life satisfaction and life engagement in
Bangladeshi youth population. This study emphasizes on the need for attention towards this
rising problem of internet addiction and the young population which is most vulnerable to this
issue and its detrimental consequences. The findings can be used to design Internet management
strategies and aid the policy makers and administrators in prevention, diagnosis and treatment of
Internet addiction. For example, policy makers and administrators can take appropriate measures
to train the counselors, set up counseling centers and offer treatment at counseling centers,
clinics, and hospitals. Time to time monitor of Internet use is needed before the situation
becomes uncontrollable. Internet addicts should be trained to develop time management and
control on their use. Also, friends, family members or other relatives who are spending much
more time on Internet, giving more preferences than real world important things should be
encouraged to take advice from experts without any delay. Additionally, seminars, conferences
and other activities could be organized to highlight the negative consequences of problematic
Internet use. These kind of measures would make addicted people engage in their real life more
easily, instead of creating a fantasized cyber world and the issue can be tackled well with proper
planning.

In India, there is a lack of information related to internet addiction as the phenomenon is quite
recent and there are very few studies that address this issue among youth populations. Studies
also indicate that the youth population is most vulnerable to internet addiction (Kuss et al. 2013).
Although there are no specific statistics related to internet addiction among Indian youth, there is
a reason to believe based on some research evidence of an exponential increase in the numbers of
internet users. (Beard, 2005; Binder, 2013; Boyd, 2014; Young, 1999). Some researchers found
that internet addiction was significant among professional courses students. The student
population was found to have moderate to severe internet addiction. Other studies (Grover S,
Chakraborty, K, Basu D. 2010) investigated internet use pattern among professionals and found
similar results.

In a research study conducted by Menon et al. on 300 students, from a management institute in
India who were representative of the modern educated population who made extensive use of the
internet in their daily lives, the researchers found no evidence of severe internet addiction. The
addiction was more in the range of moderate to mild addiction. However, it is possible that the
reported scores were related to internet work in the campus and did not include the use of
smartphones and the time spent on using social websites using smartphones. If this were
included, it is possible that the level of internet addiction could be much higher. This study
indicated that there is a high degree of correlation between age and internet addiction with older
students being more addicted to the Internet than younger students. This may be because they
have been exposed to the internet in its various forms including chatting, emailing and
messaging and the use of social media. Also with regard to Internet usage, there were significant
differences with regard to gender with men being more addicted than women. The reason for this
is not very clear and needs to be investigated further.

This study aimed at understanding internet addiction among university students in India. More
studies need to be done, and qualitative methods and other methodologies need to be used with
larger samples and more diverse populations and not just students. This is a problem that extends
beyond just youth. The psychological and social effects also need to be examined in more depth,
and additional questionnaires need to be used to measure several outcomes of internet addiction
and its impact on the psychological well-being of the individuals.

References:

Shahnaz I. & Karim R. The Impact of Internet Addiction on Life Satisfaction and Life
Engagement in Young Adults. Universal Journal of Psychology: 2(9):273-284, 2014

Menon S., Narayanan L., Kahwaji A.T. Internet Addiction: A Research Study of College
Students in India. Journal of Economics and Business: Vol.1, No.1, 2018: 100-106