Internet Addiction and College students - Essay Example

Tan (2001) said that the Internet use plays a major role in education for students as well as for the professionals to make things easier; it greatly enhances the learning and practices of individuals and that it is meant to cause students learning and their performance at their performance at the higher-level Mayer (2000). However, there are reports that reveal, there are negative effects brought by heavy Internet use on one's psychological wellbeing (Young, 2004). Anderson (2000) explained that, internet dependent students' average use reached about 29 minutes per day.

These users utilize synchronous communication internet application nearly ten times more than the non-dependent students, who only spent an average of 3 minutes per day doing the same activities due to the fact that, users are able to get quality information from internet facilities (Asemi 2005). However, there are reports that reveal, there are negative effects brought by heavy Internet use on one's psychological wellbeing (Young, 2004), with 8% - 13% of undergraduates allegedly addicted to internet use.

The said uses have resulted to impairment among individuals' psychological well-being, academic performance and peer and family interactions (Scherer, 1997 Young, 1998). Moreover, this phenomenon of extreme use has been known as "Internet addiction (Young, 2004) and "problematic Internet use" (Caplan, 2002 & Shapira, et. al. 2003). The American Psychologist Association has prescribed criteria as basis whether or not a person be diagnosed for internet addiction disorder, and these are as follows: (1) Tolerance, which refers to individual's need for increasing quantity of time consumed on the Internet for satisfaction purposes; (2) Two or more withdrawal symptoms that develop in days until one a month or even after; (3) Use of the Internet in order to alleviate or avoid withdrawal symptoms; (4) The Internet is repeatedly accessed more often; if not, for longer periods that the intended time; (5) The individual loss of an important relationship, or still at risk of losing; loss of job, educational or career opportunity due to the excessive use of the Internet, and several other reasons.

Bratter and Forest (cited by Freeman, 1992) characterized addiction as "a behavior pattern of obsessive drug use due to overwhelming involvement. Psychologist Kimberly S. Young, investigation nearly 500 heavy Internet users by compared their behaviors. Using the clinical criteria formulated by the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders-IV and was also published by the American Psychiatric Association; results showed that, eighty percent (80%) of the participants were dependent Internet users.

She further elaborated that, "internet use can disrupt an individual's social, academic, financial, and professional life just as the same with other well-documented addictions" (Young, 1996). Psychodynamic and personality perspectives can be accounted for addiction during early childhood traumas, relationship with certain personality traits/disorders, as well as inherited psychological dispositions (Sue,