The relationship of depressive symptoms and quality of life levels with internet addiction in adolescents

The study was planned as a cross-sectional correlational study to evaluate the relationship between depressive symptoms, health-related quality of life and digital screen usage time with internet addiction in adolescents. The population of the study, which was conducted between February and May 2023 in secondary schools in Başakşehir district of Istanbul, consisted of 750 students. The sample of the study was made with 278 students who volunteered with stratified random sampling with a minimum of 254 with the Power method. The data were collected with "Personal Information Form", "Young Internet Addiction Test-Short Form", "Center for Epidemiological Studies for Children Depression Scale" and "KIDSCREEN-10 Quality of Life Scale" and analyzed using SPSS Windows 25.0 program. It was found that 65.8% of the adolescents had their own mobile phones and 62.9% of them had digital devices at home. It was found that the average daily total digital screen usage was 10.57±7.46 hours and the depression scores and internet addiction scores of adolescents whose daily digital screen usage time increased increased, but their quality of life scores decreased. In the study, a significant relationship was found between internet addiction and depression and quality of life level (p<0.05). As a result, it was found that as the quality of life scores of adolescents increased, internet addiction and depression and sub-dimension scores decreased, and as internet addiction scores increased, depression scores increased. Based on the excessive digital screen usage time of adolescents, awareness trainings on appropriate internet use should be planned primarily for students, as well as parents and teachers. It is recommended to plan improvement and health promotion in the school environment of adolescents by increasing school health nursing practices.