International Journal of Psychiatric Nursing

To assess the prevalence of internet addiction among adolescents, its impact on health and its association with selected demographic variables.

Internet addiction is defined as a psychological dependence on the Internet and is characterized by an increasing investment of resources on Internet-related activities, unpleasant feelings (e.g., anxiety, depression, emptiness) when offline, an increasing tolerance to the effects of being online, and denial of the problematic behaviors.

Non experimental approach and descriptive research design was adopted in this study. The study was conducted in two selected schools of Ludhiana, Punjab. The sample of this study was 300 adolescents. Stratified random sampling technique was used to raw the sample. The tools used for the data collection were socio-demographic Performa, internet addiction test and structured questionnaire. Feasibility of the study was confirmed by pilot study Data was collected from adolescents studying in 9^th to 12^th class in selected schools. Data was analyzed by descriptive and inferential statistics and presented through tables and figures.

The results revealed that maximum (55.00%) adolescent have minor internet addiction, followed by (27.00%) have atypical internet addiction, than (17.67%) have moderate internet addiction & minimum (00.33%) have severe internet addiction. Majority (48.1%) of adolescents with internet has adversely affected health, followed by normal health (38.9. %) and least (13%) have very adversely affected health. Gender and family income have significant (p<0.05) impact on internet addiction among adolescents.

In the present study maximum of adolescents are having minor internet addiction and Maximum (48.1%) adolescents with internet addiction have adversely affected health. There is significant association between gender, Family income with internet addiction among adolescents.