An Exploration into the Correlation between Excessive Internet Usage and the Psychological Well-Being of College Students

The internet has become an important tool for communication, education, and entertainment, yet too much time on the net raises concerns about its possible effects on mental health. Because psychological well-being is a significant aspect of mental health and causes stress, anxiety, and general dissatisfaction with life, the association between the two must be explored. The study focuses on the relationship between internet addiction and the mental health of 155 undergraduate students at Aligarh Muslim University. The result showed that 26.5% of students enjoy good mental health and that 73.5% of students suffer from poor mental health. Among the students, 31.6% reported low dependency on the Internet, but 68.4% were found to be addicted. Internet addiction and mental health do correlate moderately positively, with a correlation coefficient of 0.58. However, it had a small relationship between internet addiction and poor mental health, showing an r = 0.313. A weakly positive correlation with a value of 0.469 was found between Internet addiction and mental health. It is evident that, although there is a correlation between the internet and mental health, this relationship probably accounts only for part of one's psychological well-being, not exclusively. Further, the study on gender has not shown any significant difference between mental health and addiction to the internet based on gender among the students. This implies that even if students today may depend increasingly on the internet, various other factors at work need to be explored.