| dc.description.abstract | Internet has become the most widespread and versatile technology in the world.
People of all ages rely on the Internet to satisfy their different needs such as learning,
entertaining, socializing, banking and shopping. With the advancement in the
technology, the usage, speed, interactivity, and access to internet over the past decade
have a tremendous increase. With this tremendous increase in the internet usage, the
one specific age group that seem to be more prone towards developing a problem
with the internet are the adolescents. The elevated usage of the internet by this age
group may have exposed them to an unprecedented risk of Internet addiction which
has harmful psychological and behavioral effects on the user. The concept of Internet
addiction was first coined by Goldberg (1996) as “a pathology, a disorder, an overuse
of this technology, including a wide range of behaviours and impulse-control”. This
study aimed to synthesize previous findings by investigating the effect of parenting
styles and personality traits on Internet addiction among adolescents of urban
Ghaziabad. A sample of 300 adolescents of urban Ghaziabad was collected wherein,
150 adolescents suffered from Internet addiction and 150 were Non-addicted. The
sample included both male and female participants. The participants filled out three
self-report questionnaires including the Internet Addiction Test (Young, 1998), the
Parental Authority Questionnaire (Buri, 1991) and the Big Five Inventory (John,
1991). The data was analyzed using descriptive statistics – Mean, Standard of
Deviation (SD) and Analysis of Variance (ANOVA).
As per the results of the study, we observed that the 5 hypotheses of the study were
accepted while 3 hypotheses were rejected. Results indicated significant difference
among the means of the two groups (Internet addicted and Non-addicted) in three the
dimensions of personality – Extraversion, Neuroticism and Conscientiousness.
Similarly, significant difference among the means of the two parenting styles –
Permissive and Authoritarian was found in both the groups (Internet addicted and
Non-addicted). No significant difference was found among the means of Openness
and Agreeableness personality traits with respect to the two groups Internet addicted
and Non-addicted. Also, no significant difference was found with respect to
Authoritative parenting style among both the groups Internet Addicted and Non Addicted. | en_US |
