Indian Journal of Public Health Research & Development

Internet has made our lives extremely easy, as well as on the other hand there are also many problems associated with it, its excessive usage and misuse can produce pathological behavioural problems in its users. This uncontrolled usage of internet has been defined as internet addiction disorder

to assess the level of internet addiction among adolescent and to assess the impact of internet use on quality of life of adolescent.

A cross-sectional study was conducted in 525 school going adolescent of Meerut district with the help of semi structured questionnaire consisting of questions related to demographic information and Young's Internet Addiction Test Scale, consisting of 20-item, based upon five-point Likert scale was used and subjects were classified into normal users (score <20), mild (score 20–49), moderate (score 50–79) and severe (score 80–100) internet addiction.

The mean age of adolescents was seen to be 14.8 (±1.3) years. Prevalence of Internet Addiction was found to be 63.1%. Of which; 48.8% were mild, 13.7% were moderate and 0.6% were severe addicts of Internet, Male students were found to be more addicted than females. Total IAT mean was 1.44 with ± SD of 0.87.

Internet addiction is growing menace in adolescent and its prevalence is increasing drastically¸ a special attention has to given on adolescent mental health which can be deteriorate by excessive use of internet.