research on internet addiction

I’d like to thank everyone who advised me on the best way to approach this research paper. Special thanks to my supervisor for his advice and recommendations.

Furthermore, I’d like to thank the University for commencing the process of constructing this study project. The faculty members’ initiative and coordination roles were highly regarded throughout the period. I’d also like to thank my parents and family for their unwavering support during the school year.At last, I want to take this opportunity to pass on my true appreciation and gratefulness to the Almighty God for his direction and endowments while undertaking this entire project. He gave me intelligence and additionally great well-being henceforth empowering me to achieve this venture in stipulated time.

Abstract

The aim of the research proposal was to investigate the extent of internet addiction and how it creates negative behaviours among the young people aged between 15 and 18 in Singapore and the United Kingdom. The hypothesis is that young people are negatively affected by internet addiction. The problem that the research seeks to solve is a general issue as internet addiction is widespread globally. The reason for conducting this research is because of the adverse effects that come with addiction such as cyber-bullying, anti-social behaviours, and a decline in academic performance. The objectives of the research includes to find out what young people do on the internet; determining the negative effects associated with internet addiction and investigating how youths are negatively affected by the addiction to internet. The study has been conducted using document study as the methodology and has relied on secondary data such as journal articles, text books, and government publications. The study has utilised both qualitative and quantitative analysis and measures variables on what young people do on the internet; negative effects associated with internet addiction and how youths are negatively affected by the internet addiction to the internet. The control variables in the research were same knowledge and understanding by the youths.

Key Words: Internet addiction, youth, Singapore, UK, Negative effects, Smartphone, Social Platforms/ media

Introduction

The Internet has a high degree of influence on the youth (Orsal, et al. 2013, p. 445-554). Despite the positive impacts, the negative influences of the youth using internet are enormous (Orsal, et al. 2013, p. 445-554). Conducting this research on the negative effects of internet addiction will help in identifying already affected youths for appropriate action to be taken against negative effects of internet addiction such as depression (Orsal, et al. 2013, p. 445-554). Statistics show that many teenagers have been negatively affected by internet addiction despite the fact that some cannot recognize it (Teong and Ang 2016). Teong and Ang (2016, p. 41) revealed that the most vulnerable group to internet addiction are youth, who have at least five years’ experience on using the internet. In the UK, prevalence rates of internet addiction as high as 18% are reported (Niemz, Griffiths, and Banyard 2006, p. 480-483). Another study by Goel, Subramanyam, and Kamath 2013, p. 140), showed that moderate users in Hong Kong were 74.5% while addicts were 0.7%. However, there is a challenge of determining Internet addicts because many have no idea that this problem exists (Goel, Subramanyam, and Kamath 2013, p. 142).

Since early 1990s, there has been a rapid growth of the internet users which has made it one of the most critical research topics (Rotsztein 2003). Being that internet usage is a growing phenomenon, many researchers have tried to identify the effects of increased internet usage more so on the young individuals (Morahan-Martin 2005). A previous study conducted by ZDNet Research (2006) found out that 83.4% of the internet users are aged between 20 and 40 years. Additionally, 30 percent of these users had no specific reason of browsing the internet, 67 percent of the users were male, young adults using the internet often act like teenagers in terms of the behaviour when using these sites and 72 percent are mainly engaged in social networking both night and day (PewResearch Center 2010). According to Unsal, Ruzgar and Ruzgar (2008) the world has changed in the last two decades in terms of how people work and live because of the development in information and communication industries. The reason accredited for this change has been the increase in computers distribution as well as mobile phones, which has made communication take place in a cyberspace also known as a virtual place (Kim 2008). The cyberspace is a new environment which has differing features from the world we live in because it has linked the people from all over the globe together, has increased learning efficiency, and dissemination and acquiring of knowledge for further development has been made easy. Asia has the highest number of internet users globally, where approximately 922.3 individuals are active users of the internet which represents 44% of the universal internet users as presented by the Internet World Stats. The high internet usage in Asia has come with a growing concern known as internet addiction. According to Hechanova and Czincz (2009), Asian countries including Singapore have been highly affected by the increased internet usage. In 2005, a leading judge in Beijing stated that 90 percent of the juvenile crimes in the city were related to the use of the internet (Sebag-Montefiore, 2005). Internet addiction has been defined as an impulse disorder whose features are not involved with using drugs that intoxicate but has a huge similarity with pathological gambling (Sato 2006). Young people using the internet often develop emotional attachment with certain activities while others become attached to their online friends (Sato 2006). The prevalence of internet addiction across the universe varies. In Taiwan, a research established that 2.4% of the students in high school were addicted compared to 19.8 percent of the adults (Ko, Yen, Chen , Chen , and Yen 2005, p. 728-733). In Korea, a research by concluded that 14 percent of the 455 children who participated in the study, and 20% of the 836 adolescents were screened positive for excessively using the internet (Kim, Lau, Cheuk, Kan, Hui, & Griffiths 2010). This trend was quite similar to a study conducted in Singapore where 17.1 percent of the interviewed adolescents with a mean age of 13.9 years were found to use the internet at least five hours daily (Mythily, Qiu, and Winslow 2008, p. 9-14).

This study explores internet addiction by young people from Singapore and the United Kingdom. The choice of these countries is because Singapore is in Asia and the UK is in Europe and these countries happen to experience increased internet usage by young people. A study in these countries will help find out how internet addiction in the Western and Asian countries differs among the youth and examine if there are similarities in the effects.

In the research that has been conducted, the independent variable is the internet while the dependent variable is the young people. The research proposal hypothesis is that young people are negatively affected by internet addiction. The aim of the research was investigating the extent of internet addiction and how it creates negative behaviours among the young people. This paper seeks to achieve the following objectives:

1. To find out what young people do on the internet

2. To determine the negative effects associated with internet addiction

3. To investigate how youths are negatively affected by the addiction to internet

The study has adopted an interpretive paradigm. This means that the interpretive study sought to find out the kinds of activities and social media platforms that young people are engaged in when using the internet and what leads to addiction and the effects of internet addiction (Saunders, Lewis, and Thornhill 2011). The methodology that has been used in this study is document study. The study relied on the use of secondary data, such as journal articles, text books, and government publications. The study has utilized both qualitative and quantitative analysis.

This study has been based on the perspective of three theories. One of these theories is the theory of social influences that explains peer pressure and social judgment among the youth. The second theory is the moral development theory which examines our values and behaviours of human beings. Finally, the study explores Bandura’s social learning theory, which looks at people copying the behaviours of others.

Literature Review

Internet addiction has caused negative effects to the different groups in the society (Sato 2006, p. 279). According to Sato (2006, p. 279), Internet addiction is an impulse control disorder with unique characteristics that can be used to identify individuals who are addicted to the internet. Among these features include low self-esteem, high level of suicidal ideation as well as high depression levels (Sato 2006, p. 282). There is a consensus that the global use of internet has increased, and this has been caused by the advancement of technology where devices such as Smartphone are easily available for teenagers both at school and home (Teong and Ang 2016, p. 41). Moreover, with the increase in social media platforms, the need for internet continues to increase. The Internet offers various direct benefits to the society in the way of technological advancement. The explosive internet growth has hugely impacted on interpersonal and communication behaviour (Goel, Subramanyam, and Kamath 2013). Due to this growth, there has been an increase in psychological research which seeks to understand the impact it has on the society. The original design of the internet was to facilitate research activities and communication (Rotsztein 2003). However, because of the huge growth in its use, it has led to internet addiction which has been referred to as a mental disorder.

Globally, the use of the internet by the youth has been mainly through the mobile internet (Ofcom 2016). This has been made easier by the increase in Smartphone which youths can easily access (Ofcom 2016). For instance, in the United Kingdom, 71% households own a smartphone (Ofcom 2016). Young people aged 15 years to 16 years can easily access Internet-enabled Smartphone (Sonia, Leslie, Jane, Giovanna, and Kjartan 2014). In Singapore, the situation is the same with the country being ranked globally as the highest country that has experienced high Smartphone penetration with nine individuals out of ten having access to it (Lim 2009, p. 1229). The statistic reflects the country’s high investment in broadband internet penetration which has been rated to be 99.9% (Lim 2009, p. 1229). The major uses of the internet in these two countries is ccessing social media platforms and sending and receiving of emails (Statista 2016). In the United Kingdom, internet users aged between 16 and 24 years were rated to send and receive emails at a high rate in 2015 (Statista 2016). However, in Singapore, internet users were rated to send and receive emails is less than the UK (Statista 2016). Youth are engaged in is accessing social media platforms such as Facebook, Snapchat, Instagram, and Twitter among others (Statista 2016). Singapore has been rated to have the second highest social media platforms penetration in the world rated (Mohd 2014).

The use of social media platforms between girls and boys vary (Thanuskodi 2013; p.3). For instance, while boys are said to be more interested in playing online video games, girls are said to be users of visually oriented social media platforms (Thanuskodi 2013; p.3). In Singapore, a majority of the internet users are male because they prefer playing video games on the internet (Thanuskodi 2013; p.3). In line with this, the female internet users prefer online reading compared to their male counterparts. However, in the UK females and males users of internet, in particular, social networking varies with only 2% (Government of UK 2015). In both countries, using the internet to access entertainment sites is common (Statista 2016). In the UK, the use of the internet to access entertainment sites is higher than Singapore (Statista 2016). In the last decade, both countries have experienced increased internet news consumption (Ofcom 2016). Both countries have experienced a sharp decline in the individuals who access news from newspapers. Moreover, while in both countries studies to do research are high; in the UK, statistics shows that because of the high number of higher academic institutions, it has a high affinity for research than Singapore does (Ofcom 2016).

The trends on the internet between the United Kingdom and Singapore can be explained using the social learning theory commonly known as the Bandura’s theory. The Bandura’s social learning theory is a theory of social behaviour and learning which proposes that people can acquire new behaviours by imitating or observing others (Bandura 1971). The theory holds that learning is a cognitive process which often happens in a social context and has the ability to occur purely through direct instruction or observation even when there is no direct reinforcement (Bandura 1963).

According to this theory, people learn from each other through modelling, imitation, or observation (Bandura 1977). Youth, therefore, learn by making observations of others behavioural attitudes and behaviour outcomes. Learning occurs as a result of forming an idea on the performance of new behaviours as information which is coded is later used as a guide for conducting certain acts (Bandura 1977). This means that there is a capability of young copying or learning from the behaviours of others because of the ease of access to the internet. It is easy for young people to imitate the behaviours of others without considering the consequences that will come with adopting certain behaviours. This theory by Bandura perfectly explains the reason why internet addiction is common globally among the young people (Bandura 1963). The development of many social media platforms has provided an opportunity for young people to easily learn through observation and imitation. Regardless of the location in the world, people can access videos and messages which contain information that is easily decoded. The Bandura theory asserts that the ease of decoding and encoding has diversified how young people can learn and be updated (Kearns 2013, p. 61).

There are four main basic principles of social learning theory which can influence on the youth to become addicted to the internet (Bandura 1977). First is the attention principle, where individuals cannot learn without having to be focused on a certain task (Wheeler 2014). In this case, the increased attention on internet activities influences youth to become familiar with them and eventually becomes addicts. For instance, when a young person pays attention to what their peers are doing on the internet maybe gambling, they become interested and with time they get acquitted to the same behaviour. This principle asserts that people are more likely to focus their attention in activities that they find different or novel in some way (Wheeler 2014). The social context they find themselves in aid in the reinforcement of these perceptions.

The second social learning principle is retention which asserts that people learn through internalizing information in their memories (Wheeler 2014). Through this principle, people learn by recalling certain information later when they are faced with a similar situation that they initially learned the information (Wheeler 2014). For instance, when youths encounter a certain online game or social media platform and they originally learned it from peers, they will try to recall how it was played and engage in it. With time, they will get used to it and eventually find themselves spending more time than they expected which later grows to addiction. The third principle is reproduction which means that human beings have a tendency to reproduce previously learned information skills, knowledge or behaviour when required (Wheeler 2014). To improve an individual’s responses to the situation, practice through physical and mental rehearsal proves to be significant (Bandura 1977). In this case, young individuals become addicted to certain internet activities by way of physically practicing on how to use the features in the platform that they first acquired information. For example, in the case of listening to online music, a young person might practice how to search a song in a certain platform and download it maybe for free which violates the rights of the musician. They seek to gain perfection until they do it without any major struggle.

Finally, motivation is the last principle of the social learning theory which asserts that human beings need to be motivated to be involved in something (Wheeler 2014). Motivation originates from observing the reward or punishment one acquires when they get involved in a certain activity (Bandura 1977). In the case of youth and internet, individuals will be motivated to continually engage in certain internet activities when they see others making new friends and having fun and often fail to think of the negative consequences. Often, young people tend to see the positive consequences of engaging in internet activities and are more likely to repeat the behaviour which leads to the addiction.

There are numerous negative effects of internet addiction, one being anti-social behaviour which includes the reduction in social life. The major anti-social behaviours that young people show include the use of drugs such as alcohol, defying their parents, engaging in sexual activities, and hostile behaviours (Ma 2012, pp. 2187-2196). Another negative effect includes cyber bullying among the teens. Athanasiades et al. 2015 (p. 15) reports that one of the most serious and common threats that teenagers using technology such as social networks, emails, and Smartphone among others is cyber-bullying. Finally, internet addiction can negatively affect the academic performance of students. Akhter 2013 (p. 1793) reports that academic performance is affected by internet addiction by causing a decline in study habits drop in school grades, students missing classes, lack of proper integration with co-curricular activities and risk of being on academic probation. In the long-term, continued negative effects causes development of anti-social behaviour where affected people lack effective communication and social skills, and they have a low IQ. Moreover, it results to cyber-bullies as well as victims of these bullies. Finally, in the long-run, it leads to many drop outs that deprive the economy of the much needed academic input (Ma 2012, p. 2187-2196; Akhter 2013, p. 1793; Athanasiades 2015, et al. p. 15).

These behaviours can be explained using the social influence theory, and the moral development theory. According to the social influence theory, the youth are highly influenced by social judgment and peer pressure. Therefore, they become victims to internet addiction because of bad influence from their friends. The main theme in this theory proposed by Kelman (1958) is that a person’s beliefs, attitudes, and subsequent behaviours or actions are influenced in three processes, compliance, identification, and internalization. This theory posits that young people experience changes in their actions and attitudes and the change might occur at different levels. The difference in the changes experienced by the person is attributed to the differing processes via which people accept the influence. For influence to be achieved, three processes must occur among them compliance where the assumption is that it will happen when the person accepts and adopts the influence and induced behaviour to avoid punishments or gain rewards. Therefore, the satisfaction that a young person gains from compliance to engaging in internet activities is because of the social effect to accepting the influence (Kelman 1958, p. 53).

The second primary process of influence is identification which happens when a young person adopts the induced behaviour with an aim of maintaining or creating a beneficial desired relationship to another group or person meaning that the satisfaction will occur during the act to conform (Kelman 1958, p.53). The final process is internalization which is assumed to happen when a person accepts the influence after they perceive the content of the behaviour induced is rewarding where content refers to the actions and opinions of others. The satisfaction is therefore because of the new behaviours content (Kelman 1958, p.53). In this case, young people influenced to use the internet find activities such as social networking rewarding and they internalize the new perceptions to a point they get addicted and cannot afford not to spend at least a few hours on these activities. Increased internalization of the internet activities leads to negative effects such as poor performance in academics and development of anti-social behaviours sometimes without the knowledge of these young people.

On the other hand, the moral development theory asserts that the development of internet addictive behaviours can be prevented by upbringing the youth in a moral way. This theory states that if an individual is morally upright, one will do the right thing regardless of the situation they are facing. Kohlberg explained the moral development theory using various stages with the bottom line being that morality starts during childhood years and has the capability to be affected by various factors (Kohlberg 1973). Morality can be developed either positively or negatively depending on how a person accomplishes certain tasks in the various stages of moral development (Kohlberg 1958). This theory asserts that the increased use of internet which leads to addiction depends on the adolescents stage of moral development (Kohlberg 1973).

The first level, pre-conventional, the sense of morality of the child is externally controlled which means they believe and accept instructions from people older than them (Kohlberg 1976). This means that when they are taught at an early stage to use the internet without restrictions, they have a high likelihood to become internet addicts. The second level is the conventional level where the child sense of morality is often tied to the societal and personal relationships (Kohlberg 1973). At this level, the child has a likelihood of blindly accepting the societal rules. The final level is postconventional where an individual’s sense of morality becomes defined by abstract values and principles (Walker 1989). Individuals have the realization that some laws are unjust and should be changed. In this level people choose to follow what they consider to be ethical and violating them attracts a sense of guilt.

The theory of moral development depicts a scenario where teenagers can be prevented from becoming addicts to the internet mainly because of the negative consequences that come with this health problem. The society and parents should show their children what is right and wrong from early childhood days. Teenagers who have grown up knowing that being addicted to the internet can negatively affect their life will likely be cautious when engaging in internet activities compared to those who lack this knowledge. Children with knowledge on what is moral and immoral have the capability to make insightful judgements especially during this era of internet where peer influence is high.

Conclusion

The research that has been conducted investigates the level of internet addiction among teens aged between 15 and 18 years in Singapore and the United Kingdom. The hypothesis of the research proposal is that the continued use of the internet by the young people leads to negative impact.

Doing this research is important for helping the already affected individuals through interventions which will help reduce and compact the negative effects such as depression and poor academic performance. The first section of the research report presents a background of the topic as well as the main objectives that aimed to be achieved. The structure of the project has also been explained in the introductory section. The section on literature review presents the most relevant and recent information and data on the topic negative effects of internet addiction on young people. The reviewed literature shows that in both Singapore and the United Kingdom, the increase in internet access has come with increased addiction. Many of the internet users engage in activities such as sending and receiving an email as well as accessing different social media platforms such as Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube.

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