Internet for Entertainment: Impact of Internet Addiction

Introduction

Everyone feels lonely from time to time when we have no one to sit next to at lunch, when we move to a new city, or when nobody has time for us at the weekend. Yet over the last few decades, this occasional feeling has become chronic for millions. In addition, technology has a significant impact on people’s loneliness, especially the internet. Moreover, the majority of people are familiar with the word “internet addiction”. That is to say, internet addiction is one of the issues people suffer from, especially the young generation. There are some studies on how technology influences people’s social life and what the role of internet addiction in loneliness is. The research on levels of loneliness which was in Ankara University and Mimar Sinan Fine Arts University and a study researched by Satoko Ezo and Masahiro Toda on internet addiction of Japanese medical students can be shown as examples for the studies. Furthermore, the research which is done by William A. and Brandi M. in the US University of Alabama has given a couple of results about how the internet affects elder individuals, particularly when it comes to using the internet for entertainment. In this paper, I will simultaneously analyze and compare my ideas and results of the studies on the impact of the internet on people’s life.

Impact of Internet Use on Loneliness

In the UK, 60% of 18 to 34-year-olds say they often feel lonely. In the US, 46% of the entire population feels lonely regularly. Predominant studies proved that mostly loneliness happens to people who do not know how to talk to people or how to behave around others. Loneliness is a bodily function like hunger. (Hawkley L. Cacioppo J. AoBM, 2010). Hunger makes us pay attention to our physical needs while loneliness makes us pay attention to our social needs. That is to say, nothing can protect us against loneliness because it is part of our biology. However, according to research which is done at Alabama University in the USA, information and communication technology (ICT) has a positive impact on older people’s social life (average age 84). The Methodology of the research was, giving 8 weeks of training in using computers and the internet to communicate with family and friends, predominantly through Facebook and email. Participants’ frequency of going online is measured. At the end of the period, the participants were asked in 5 different frequencies (0-5) 0 coded as “Never”, 1-Once every month, 2-Few times during the period, 3-Several times in a month, 4-About once a week, 5-Several times a week. The participants were asked questions such as “Has using the internet made you reach people easily?” or “Has the frequency of going online made you less isolated?” in order to measure how the internet use affected the rate of loneliness, social isolation and qualities of communications with others. The method well worked and it illustrates positive results (William A. Anderson “The Impact of ICT” page 6).

Relation Between Loneliness and Internet Addiction

The results show that using the internet helped 95.7% of male participants to decrease their loneliness rate while the percentage was 81.4% of female participants. According to Brandi M. McCullough, women are more socially active than men due to some female participants consider that use of the internet caused them to not see enough of the people they feel close to. While the internet is spreading throughout the world and getting more available for much more people, it has caused a new kind of addiction, named internet addiction, which is a growing issue of modern life. This addiction brings about symptoms of depression, irritability, and a decrease in social interaction and education (Shaghasemi, 2006). Encieh Sharifpoor, Mohammad Javad, and Afsaneh Mohammadzadeh did a study in order to determine the correlation between loneliness and depression with internet addiction in young female individuals of Torbat-e-Jaam city in Iran. In this illustrative research, 150 students were selected. The participants were asked to fill out three questionnaires as “Young Internet Addiction Test”, “Loneliness Scale” and “The Beck Depression Inventory”. The test of young internet addiction is developed by Kimberly Yung. It is based on symptoms of internet addiction diagnosis and the Likert scale. The Likert scale is developed by psychologist Rensis Likert. It is the most widely used approach to scaling responses in survey research (Iowa State University 2010.) “Loneliness scale” has 38 questions including three subscales of loneliness due to family relationships, loneliness due to friendship, and the effective signs of loneliness while “The Beck Depression Inventory” includes 21 questions to assess the severity of depression in adults and adolescents. The use of the methodology on 150 female participants whose mean age was 15/16 years has given positive results.

The results have illustrated that there is a positive significant relationship between loneliness and internet addiction. Researchers of the study claim that loneliness happens when a gap occurs between the favorable relationship and those who feel too much lonely, have low self-esteem caused by the lack of effective and favorable relationships. Furthermore, the study which is done in Turkey by Ebru Oguz and Ozlem Cakir in Ankara University and Mimar Sinan Fine Arts University has shown significant results on this theme. The purpose of the study was to reveal the relationship between levels of loneliness and internet addiction in teacher candidates. The participants were 347 teacher candidates who were attending the Pedagogical Formation Program at Ankara University. In this study, researchers used the “Internet Addiction Scale” and “UCLA Loneliness Scale”. “Internet Addiction Scale” which has 26 items was developed at Ankara University by Cakir who is one of the students at the University. UCLA Loneliness Scale was developed at the University of California In Los Angeles in order to determine the emotion of loneliness and it includes more than 40 items.

Conclusion

The results of the research do not show a significant difference according to variables such as marital status, age, working status, and length of being online. However, it shows a very small difference in variables like gender and access to the internet. To be concluded that if we analyze the combination of the results of the research above, internet use has a significant impact on individuals’ social life. That is to say, using the internet does not make a person socially isolated or suffer from loneliness. Although internet usage reduces face-to-face communication between people we are close to, it has already become our life in the devices and if someone does not use the internet at all the person will become socially isolated because each person around him is using the internet and they talk activities which they experienced in social media. However, overusing the internet for entertainment such as gaming can cause social disorder in people. Keeping balance is the best way to avoid risky results.

References

1. Hawkley, L., Cacioppo, J. (2010). Loneliness is a bodily function like hunger. AoBM.

2. Anderson, W. A. (n.d.). The Impact of ICT on Loneliness in Elder Individuals. University of Alabama.

3. Sharifpoor, E., Mohammadzadeh, M. J., & Mohammadzadeh, A. (2010). Loneliness and depression with internet addiction in young female individuals. Torbat-e-Jaam city, Iran.

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4. Oguz, E., & Cakir, O. (n.d.). Relationship between levels of loneliness and internet addiction in teacher candidates. Ankara University and Mimar Sinan Fine Arts University.