Comparison of Internet addiction and depression among students of technical and humanitarian fields of study

Today, billions of users from all over the world are connected to the World Wide Web. A modern user has virtually unlimited and free access to the Internet, which has become an integral part of our daily lives. Even though the tool has its advantages, it comes with certain «hidden traps», one of which is an excessive reliance on staying within this network. This issue is referred to as «internet addiction» or «problematic internet use». The «Internet addiction» phenomenon is most commonly observed among teenagers and students. The majority of students are vulnerable to internet addiction. The reasons for developing such addiction include persistent overuse of the internet and the inability to disengage from it in a timely manner. Personality traits, such as age, psychological, individual and social factors, are also considered to be significant. They play a crucial role in the development of internet addiction. Individuals with a pronounced internet addiction are often characterized by a lack or complete absence of social connections in their lives, poor communication skills, loneliness, and various psychological issues. Psychological research on internet addiction has yielded conflicting results: some studies indicate that people suffering from this condition are prone to depression, while others suggest that the correlation between the two is negligible. In order to prove or disprove these statements, we organized a preliminary empirical study in which we studied the degree of manifestation of depressive states in student youth suffering from Internet addiction. In our study, we hypothesized that students who suffer from Internet addiction are more likely to develop depressive states than those students who do not have this addiction. To conduct the empirical study, we used the following methods for psychological diagnostics: 1. The Chen Internet Addiction Scale (CIAS), which was developed by the Chinese scientist S. Chen in 2003; 2. The Beck Depression Inventory-II, developed by the American psychiatrist and psychologist Aron Beck in 1961. This study involved students studying at the Federal State Budgetary Educational Institution of Higher Education «Southwest State University» in Kursk, groups YUR-33b (humanitarian direction of training) and KS-21b (technical direction of training). The total sample was 50 people aged 18 to 21 years.