Relationship Of Internet Addiction With Social Connectedness, Self Esteem, Anxiety, Depression, And Insomnia

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Dr. Samita Sharma , Ajaypal Singh , Amit Bhatia , Adarsh Kohli , Reedam Pandey

Abstract

Background: Internet Addiction Disorder (IAD) refers to excessive use of internet which lead to distress and impairment in socio-occupational functioning. A number of psychological and personality variables seem to be correlated to it.


Objective: The aim of this study was to find out the relationship of Internet Addiction with Anxiety, Depression, Self Esteem, Social connectedness and Insomnia.


Methodology: Around 140 college going students, both males and females in the age range of 16-35 years were recruited using purposive sampling technique. Online questionnaire consisting of Young’s Internet Addiction Scale (Kimberly,1998), Rosenberg Self Esteem Scale (Rosenberg,1965), Generalized Anxiety Disorder-7item Scale-GAD7(Spitzer,2006), Patient Health Questionnaire-PHQ9 (Kroenke,2001) Social Connectedness Scale-R(Lee,2001), Insomnia Severity Scale (Morin,2011) were administered.


Results: Descriptive-analytic correlation revealed that Internet addiction was positively related to Depression, Anxiety and Insomnia Scores and negatively related to Social Connectedness and Self-esteem Scores. Regression analysis indicated that Internet addiction was able to predict the variance in psychological variables like social connectedness, self-esteem, depression, anxiety and insomnia to some extent.


Conclusion: Current study is replicating results from studies worldwide. It can be concluded that IA is associated with poor sleep quality, low scial connectedness, low Self Esteem and High depression and Anxiety severity. Further longitudinal studies and larger sample sizes are required to establish sound model for etiopathogenesis of IA, as these variables are also dependant on each other.

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