Impact of internet usage on the psychosocial factors among college students in Chennai

The aim of the study is to understand the influence of internet usage and dependency on the psychosocial well-being of college students. The samples comprised of 1200 college students belonging to the age group of 17-21 years. Of the 1200, 600 belonged to government colleges and 600 were from private colleges. To assess the student’s internet usage, social interaction, mental well-being and loneliness questionnaires were used namely, ‘The Young People’s Internet Usage’ Questionnaire by Child Exploitation and Online Protection (CEOP) Centre, UK, Mental, physical and spiritual Well-Being Scale (MPS Scale) by Vella-Brodrick and Allen (1995) and UCLA Loneliness Scale developed by Russell (1996). Descriptive and inferential statistics were computed using SPSS to analyse the data collected. The findings of the present study report better psychological well-being among the female participants. In addition, private college students were found to have increased social interaction than the government college students. Whereas, the male students belonging to private colleges were found to be lonelier. Besides, a significant relationship was found between internet usage and psychological well-being and social interaction. Furthermore, it was found that the type of college, gender, education of mother, well-being and social interaction contributed negatively to the internet usage of the college students. Whereas, loneliness, internet dependency, education of father and family’s monthly income contributed positively to the internet usage thereby indicating that higher the internet usage, higher the internet dependency and loneliness and lower the psychological well-being and social interaction among the college students.