How Internet Addiction Impacts Teens Health
Introduction

The hypothesis of this study is that the Internet influence on adolescence can be negative in terms of mental, social and emotional health if Internet engagement is not moderated.

This research is important because more and more studies are showing that teenagers are getting addicted to technology, to mobile devices, to social media, and that they have not developed important communication skills needed for the real world. Thus, they are unable to develop real world relationships and support networks, and instead rely on Internet-based relationships, which are superficial and not sufficient for real sociality.

Adolescents are the primary population affected by Internet and social media addictions—but these addictions can last into adulthood.

The traditional thoughts on the topic are that social media and the Internet are new media and teens turn to them because their peers are there and they can communicate and share information on these virtual platforms more easily. There is little awareness in the public view of the negative effects of too much Internet.

Internet and Depression in Adolescents

Cheung, Chan, Lui, Tsui & Chan (2018) examined the correlations between Hong Kong adolescents’ Internet use and self-esteem levels, loneliness levels and depression in a sample of 665 teens. The major factor they found that correlated with Internet addiction was online gaming. They also found that self-esteem levels were negatively correlated with Internet addiction while loneliness and depression were positively correlated with Internet addiction. The data was self-reported based on a questionnaire distributed through email to the sample, obtained through schools in Hong Kong. The researchers concluded that the psychological well-being of adolescents may depend upon moderating Internet usage. However, the study was limited by the fact that it only looked at those three variables and did not include others that might impact the young person’s level of loneliness or depression—such as family life, support network, religious or philosophical beliefs, socio-economic status and so on. It could be that other factors are causing depression and loneliness in teens and to cope with this they are turning to the Internet the way other teens turn to drugs or alcohol. It is possible that the Internet is a kind of self-medication for teens—but this is not really explored in the study by Cheung et al. (2018). They simply show a positive correlation between Internet addiction and loneliness and depression in Hong Kong teens. The reasons for this correlation could be virtually anything.

The study by Agarwal, Verma and Agarwal (2017) looked at 900 adolescent students who were involved in some form of violence in the prior six months. The students were surveyed and it was found that 650 of them used the Internet, nearly 500 of them had been bullied, while nearly 400 of them had minimal...…to cyberbullying. Whether these negative mental health, emotional health, social health, and physical and spiritual health effects are directly caused by Internet usage or whether teens turn to the Internet for comfort and for self-coping is unclear from the research. More study needs to be done on identifying a causal relationship rather than a mere correlational or associative relationship. It is not surprising that depressed teens should be found using the Internet. After all, these teens have grown up as digital natives and the majority of them have access to the Internet, so they are going to use it. Teens who suffer from loneliness and depression could be suffering from these issues for a variety of reasons, but the studies do not explore these issues.

One issue could be that the studies are primarily quantitative and are not qualitative in design. The research could benefit from looking at more qualitative research that is exploratory in nature to see if there is any evidence that Internet addiction is causing depression or loneliness or vice versa. An exploratory study using the interview method could help to shed light on the nature of the relationship. Thus, future research on this topic should focus on obtaining qualitative studies to see what researchers have found with respect to the nature of the relationship between Internet addiction and depression, suicide and overall health.