Research On Relations Among Undergraduates' Internet Use, Internet Addiction, Personality Trait, And Social Support

The influence of the Internet has increased in recent years. This makes the psychological aspects of Internet use one of the focuses of psychological research. There are 59.1 million Internet users in China by Jan.2003, of which 54.9% are youth. Young users are in the period of developing their personality. They thirst for close relationships, and face more conflicts of interaction both in real world and on the Internet. How to help young Internet users developing their healthy Internet usage, and making the Internet an instrument for developing harmonious relationships? All these put forward new topics to psychological workers. For answering these questions, so we must disclose the frameworks of Internet use.This paper is to study relations among Internet users' personality, self-esteem, loneliness, social support, their Internet use, and Internet addiction from the perspective of both psychology and behavior. The author also analyzes factors of Internet use, so as to guide users use Internet healthily, and avoid the negative influence of Internet use. This paper is composed of four parts.Part one is literature review. In this part, researches on Internet use and Internet addiction are reviewed. Some insufficient aspects in current researches are analyzed. Most of these researches were about the relationship between the following pairs: Internet usage and personality traits, Internet usage and self-esteem, Internet usage and loneliness, Internet usage and social support and Internet addiction. However, although researchers explored psychological aspects of Internet use from different views, they ignored the varieties of Internet services, users' personality, and different ways of interpersonal interaction on the Internet. Furthermore, as for China, due to its unique cultural environment, little research was done on the users' Internet use and Internet addiction.In part two, hypothesis and objective of the total research are set, and four studies are developed. The instruments of studies are Internet usage scale, Chinese Internet addiction scale, 16PF, UCLA loneliness scale, self-esteem scale, and social support scale. Topics of four studies are: correlations between behavioral and psychologicalfeatures of Internet use; correlations between personality traits, behavioral and psychological features of Internet use; correlations among self-esteem, loneliness, social support, behavioral and psychological features of Internet use; path analysis on factors of Internet addiction.Part three is analysis and discussion. Results of the four studies were discussed and explained.We draw some conclusions in part four, and gave some advice to both educator and undergraduate Internet user as well. Conclusions of this research are as follow:First, most undergraduate Internet users in China use Internet for searching information, contacting with acquaintance, and for relaxation. The services they use frequently are E-mail, information search, chat, game, and multi-media entertainments. There are gender differences and grade differences in Internet use and Internet addiction.Second, there are wide correlations among motives of Internet use, Internet usage, interpersonal interaction on the Internet, and Internet addiction.Third, some personality traits are correlated significantly with Internet use and Internet addiction.Fourth, self-esteem, loneliness, and social support are correlated significantly with Internet use and Internet addiction.Finally, regression analysis reveals that Internet addiction is influenced by several factors either directly or indirectly. It is the result of interaction of user's cognition, behavior, and personality. Personality, social support, and motives of Internet use influence Internet addiction by act on subjective dependence on the Internet, loneliness and the use of particular Internet service.