The study of internet addiction among adolescent of Oxford College of Engineering and Management (OCEM)

Abstract

The primary objective of this study was to determine the prevalence of internet addiction (IA) among contributory factors and to determine the association between socio-demographic variables and influencing factors of using internet among Oxford College of Engineering and Management (OCEM) students. The quantitative approach along with the survey study was used as a research method and the survey questionnaire was used as the research instrument. Participants were selected through simple random sampling. The cross sectional analytical study was conducted among 169 adolescents of OCEM students. The results show that prevalence rate of non-addictive internet users were 20.1%  while 79.9% were addictive users. Among addictive users, 38.5% were found mild addiction, 40.8% were found moderate addiction, only 0.6% were found in severe addiction. The results also shows that the prevalence of internet addiction was significantly high among young generation. Internet addiction was also statistically significant with various demographic variables and internet use factors. The previous studies reveal that internet has become an integral part of contemporary life, bringing huge benefits in terms of expanding access to knowledge, information, social interaction, and entertainment and further noted that around 40% of the today’s world population has an internet access. The implications of this study will be beneficial to parents, educational leaders, school and college principals to understand the internet addiction problems and to formulate new academic policy to minimize the over use of internet during teaching and learning activities. It is also recommended that internet addiction can affect the physical and mental health of the students so that the problem of internet addiction should be prevented through it’s awareness program on the negative effects of over use of internet.