Internet Addiction and Its Correlation with Depression, Anxiety, Stress, and Loneliness in Undergraduate Students of UIN Malang

Abstract

The arrival of the internet in addition brings positive impacts such as facilitate communication. However, it also brings negative impacts. One of the negative impact brought by the technological development is the phenomenon called internet addiction that has been widely studied. This study aims to find the relationship between internet addiction with depression, anxiety, and stress. A total of 166 UIN Malang undergraduate students were selected as research subjects. Each of the subjects were given IAT scale, DASS-42, and UCLA Loneliness scale to measure each variable of the research. We asked the participants to fill in the questionnaires, including the demographic characteristic of the internet they use such as the device they use for accessing the internet, the provider they use, the reason they access the internet and so on. Pearson correlation conducted found that there is a correlation between internet addiction, depression (r = .32, p < 0.05) , anxiety (r = .39, p < 0.05), stress (r = .39, p < 0.05, and loneliness (r = .19, p < 0.05). The correlation score of internet addiction and loneliness are quite small; this is because of the culture diversity among the subjects. These correlation results indicate that people with internet addiction tend to have depression, anxiety, stress, and loneliness.