Internet for Entertainment: Impact of Internet Use on Kids' Well-being

Introduction

The study aimed to find the relationship between the psychological effects of the internet and the use of underage kids. They focused not only on the time spent on the internet but also on how important and how much effort they put into face-to-face interactions. Also, on the internet for entertainment, friendship networks were examined. They used 336 young people between the ages of 15 and 21, drawing participants from both secondary school and university to be surveyed. The results said that females with more online friends had higher self-esteem and lower loneliness. That is a comparison to females that have fewer online friends and the opposite was true for males. If males have a higher amount of online regular friendships, then it seems to be more powerful against self-esteem and has greater loneliness for males.

Impact of Internet Use on Underage Kids

For face-to-face friendships, the effects on themselves were about the same for males and females. However, it was stronger in males. People with more face-to-face friendships were higher on self-esteem and were less lonely and for young men who said that their online friendships networks as important were more likely to have less self-esteem and to be more likely to be lonely. The actual time that was spent on the internet was a big factor in the well-being of both sexes. Also, the factor the time spent on online and offline friendships was included in the equation. The results were arranged by study design, and with sections, the findings were factored by mental health and other random behavior in individual studies. Almost all studies said that adolescents started in 10 to 19 years of age. However, there were four studies that included ages 20 to 24. The studies were said to be true by a large proportion of the samples in the studies and the met the age requirement. The other types of sedentary acts that were studied were internet use, TV use, and video gaming and all reported sedentary acts were for entertainment. There were twelve studies that were chosen for a review that was done in the United States, eight in Australia, six in Canada, two in South Korea, and one in Norway, Ghana, China, and Serbia. There was an even amount of female and male ratio in the studies.

Effects of the Internet on Childs Well Being

The study found a difference between the two hypotheses about the effect of online communication on kids well being. The hypothesis was that online communication lowers kids well being because it takes most of the time he spends with his existing friends. Because of that, he would lose some of his friends. However, the simulation hypothesis said that online communication affects the person well being positively by on time spent with friends and the quality of those friendships. They did an online survey among 1,210 Dutch teens between 10 and 17. They also found out how your talk on online communication affects the child. Instant messaging was mostly used to talk to other friends. The time spent with friends and the chat in a public chatroom had no effects on the kids well being and the variables. That was the Valkenburg. It is starting to become easy for kids to form relationships on the internet and have incrested in the past few years. Instant messaging use has increased also chatroom use is increasing as well as personal relationships are maintained.

Conclusion

Recently the use of the internet has changed for kids. However, in the 1990’s they used the internet as entertainment. Now they use it mostly for personal communication between friends. They also investigated in this and earlier studies that instant messaging is most often used to communicate with existing friends but chatting in a chatroom is mostly used to communicate with strangers. This was supported because Ninety‐one percent of the respondents indicated that they “often” to “always” used instant messaging to communicate with existing friends. Thirty‐seven percent of the respondents indicated that they “often” to “always” used chat to communicate with existing friends.

Works Cited

1. Valkenburg, P. M., & Peter, J. (2007). Online communication and adolescent well-being: Testing the stimulation versus the displacement hypothesis. Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication, 12(4), 1169-1182.