Abstract
This study examined the effects and the connection between Internet addiction and developing depression, stress, anxiety, and psychological symptoms among university students. Participants were 342 university students from JUST University in Jordan. In this study, the English version of Davis's OCS and the DASS; to isolate and identify aspects of emotional disturbance, were used. By Measuring correlation analysis, internet addiction was found completely associated with depression, stress, and anxiety. This review according to path analysis results suggests that the association of the two conditions is multifaceted, and shows the effect of Internet addiction in developing other psychological symptoms. All the studies agreed that Internet addiction or the depression increases the risk of both complications whether they were mental disorders or addictive disorders.
Introduction
Internet addiction and depression occur together approximately twice as frequently as would be predicted by chance alone. Comorbid social media addiction and depression are a major clinical challenge as the outcomes of both conditions are worsened by the other. Notwithstanding the psychological burden of Internet addiction may contribute to depression. Both conditions may be driven by shared underlying psychological and behavioral mechanisms, such as anxiety axis activation, sleep disturbance, inactive lifestyle, poor dietary habits, and environmental and cultural risk factors. Depression is frequently spread among people with Internet addiction despite effective screening tools being available and awareness campaign. Both psychological interventions and antidepressants square measure effective in treating depressive symptoms in individuals with addiction but have mixed effects on both diseases outcome control. Clear care pathways involving a multidisciplinary team are required to get best medical and psychiatrical outcomes for individuals with comorbid Internet addiction and depression. To review the support for two hypotheses concerning the interrelationship between depression and addiction, and to identify areas in which more research is needed.
A recent relevant finding is the increased risk of addiction reported in depression that is commonly found in the community, namely non-severe, persistent, untreated depression. In view of the negative implications of the comorbidity of depression and Internet addiction, the suggestion that all clinically relevant cases of depression related to addition on websites and other types of social media networks found in the community should be treated seems logical. However, new studies seem mandatory to document the safety of antidepressant use and the efficacy of treatment of depression in cases of comorbidity.
PURPOSE OF THE STUDY
The purpose of this study is to examine the effects and the connection between Internet addiction and developing depression, stress, anxiety, and psychological symptoms among university students. Participants were 342 university students from JUST University in Jordan. In this study, the English version of Davis's OCS and the DASS; to isolate and identify aspects of emotional disturbance, were used. By Measuring correlation analysis, internet addiction was found completely associated with depression, stress, and anxiety. This review according to path analysis results suggests that the association of the two conditions is multifaceted, and shows the effect of Internet addiction in developing other psychological symptoms. All the studies agreed that Internet addiction or the depression increases the risk of both complications whether they were mental disorders or addictive disorders.
With the growth of social media users worldwide, Internet addiction has become a pandemic in the new era. A study by Kot et al reported that the prevalence of Internet addiction ranged from 1% to 36.7%. Meanwhile the variability in prevalence rates across several studies that were reviewed before this one may be attributed to variations in accessibility of the internet in different countries, with definitions of Internet addiction and diagnostic instruments. Internet addiction and psychiatric co-morbidity may co-occur as a dual diagnosis and engender significant impact on patients and existing treatment services. Internet addiction is a new problem of modern societies nowadays and many studies have considered this issue. The prevalent use of Internet is increasing markedly during these years, but with all the benefits Internet brings, problems of excessive Internet use and addiction are becoming apparent.
The growing number of researchers on this topic indicates that Internet addiction is a psychosocial disorder and its characteristics are as follows: affective disorders and problems in social relations tolerance, withdrawal symptoms. Internet usage creates social, psychological, school and/or work difficulties in a person���s life. Seventy-nine percent of study participants were pathological Internet users, whose excessive use of the Internet was causing, social, academic, and interpersonal problems. Excessive Internet use may create a heightened level of psychological arousal, resulting in failure to eat for long periods, little sleep, and limited physical activity, possibly leading to the user experiencing physical and mental health problems such as OCD, low family relationships, depression, and anxiety.
The fact that Internet addiction and depression relationship is the aim of this study to know the prevalence of internet addiction and associated existing psychopathology in adolescent age group, and to determine the association of psychiatric symptoms with Internet addiction by controlling for the effects of demographic variables such as gender, marital status, age, and educational levels.
INTERNET ADDICTION AND AFFECT
Many studies have been conducted to test whether there is any relationship between internet addiction and depression; in August 1995, scientist Kimberly S.Young from university of Pittsburgh, conducted a research about her new theory that the internet is becoming an addiction to people , she used 396 people who are dependent on the internet and another 100 as a control group of non-dependents, by doing a survey of 8 questions the people who answered 5 or more as yes where labeled as addicted to the internet usage, as a result, she found out that people who are addicted to the internet are more prone to develop depression or other disease conditions like bipolar disorders, finding out that the dependents are usually newly introduced to the internet.
In 2000 a research was conducted by Janet Morahan-Martin and Phyllis Schumacher about loneliness and the usage of internet they found out that people with loneliness tend to use the internet more often than normal people although both normal and lonely people been using the internet for the same amount of time which is 6 months using the MANOVA method. In the evaluation of internet addiction and depression among university students a research was conducted by OzgulOrsal, OzlemOrsal, AlaettinUnsal and S. SinanOzalp from the University of Medico Socio in Turkey at 2012, the typical students score on the scale of addiction were 08.28 �� 21.89, while the depression scale score was 14.72 �� 10.58 , an alarming correlation appeared on the internet addiction and the level of depression, the research was conducted among first-year students from the University of Eskisehir Osmangazi, a total of 4585 students participated in this survey, the survey had 20 questions with 6 answers ranging from 0 (never) to 5 (always), any student with a test score of 17+ was considered to be depressed , the data was analyzed by SPSS version 20 at a significance value of p<0.05 , 31.4% were found to be suspected of depression.
In 2011 a study was made by Nancy Shields and Jeremy Kane looking at the correlations between internet usage in college students and depression, loneliness, stress in those students, in the preliminary analysis they found that most forms of Internet use were weakly to moderately correlated with one another. Controlling for age and gender, some of the strongest correlations were between personal use and times used on the previous day (r = .56, p < .001), ending the day on the internet (r = .41, p < .001), and the average Internet use per week was correlated with age (r = -.17, p < .05, N = 200), gender (r = -.24, p < .001, N = 203), in the end, the internet usage was high among those students, the depression was negative in starting the day with the usage of internet while it was high at ending the day with the internet usage.