The role of parents’ divorce in adolescents’ internet addiction

Abstract

Internet addiction is an excessive, ingrained habit and a thoughtless on-line/offline computer usage which can be divided into three subgroups related with games, web pages with sexual contents or email and internet chat programs. The causal factors of this trouble are still debated.

Aims

The purpose of our study is to survey the habits of teenagers concerning the use of internet and furthermore to investigate the frequency of internet addiction and its predisposing factors.

Material and methods

We investigated the habits of high school students (n = 154) in the county of Mureş using questionnaires (Internet Addiction Test).

Results

Young people spend daily an average of 3 hours and 38 minutes in front of a computer. 45% of the boys spend daily more than two hours with computer games while 74, 53% of the girls chat daily. 3, 41% of the adolescents think that they spend a lot of time on the net and their learning and school problems are a result of this. 9,3% of the teenage boys spend daily more than 4 hours 20 minutes in front of a computer (weekly 30 hours), what is qualified as dependence according to the American specialists. There is a strong correlation between internet addiction and parents divorce.

Conclusions

The rate of young people addicted to internet gains considerable importance. Moreover this addiction is associated with other addictions so there would be a serious need for health education programs already in high schools.