Investigation of adolescents' internet and problematic internet usage behaviours in terms of some psycho-social characteristics

The aim of this study is to determine the internet use behaviors of adolescents and investigate the relationship between problematic internet usage behavior and some psychosocial characteristics. Based on this overall aim, the study describes internet use behaviors of adolescents, their identity experiment on the internet, their Facebook use and their perceptions regarding the influence of internet usage on their lives. Morever, this study indicates whether adolescents' psychological needs, identity statuses, and sensation seeking and life satisfaction levels are a significant predictors of problematic internet use levels. The participants of the study were 2729 state high school students in Eskişehir. The instruments used for data collection were Problematic Internet Usage Scale-Adolescents, Basic Needs Inventory, Ego Identity Status Scale, Arnett Sensation Seeking Scale, Life Satisfaction Scale and Personal Information Form. Descriptive statistics and hierarchical regression analysis were used for data analysis. The research findings reveal that a considerable part of the adolescents mostly get connected to the internet by their computers at home, and use the internet mostly in evenings and get connected to the internet mostly about one to five hours per week. Adolescents mainly use the internet for – in the order of response – general information seeking, games, chat and entertainment. Given the frequency of identity experiment, i.e. pretending to be someone else on the internet, the following results were obtained: the rate of respondents that never experiment with their identity is 32.50%, the rate of those that sometimes experiment with their identity is 66.40%, and those that frequently experiment with their identity is 1.10%. The most frequent identity experiment on the 7 internet is pretending to be an imaginary person. The respondents have mentioned that adolescents refer to identity experiment on the internet to be acquainted with others more easily and to communicate more easily. The study has also shown that 90.70% of the adolescents are Facebook users and the main reason for using Facebook is "chatting". In terms of adolescents' perceptions regarding the effects of internet on their lives, it was found that 50% report positive effects on their relationships with their friends, 33% report positive effects on their daily routines. Moreover, 28% stated that internet affects their health positively, 27% reported positive effect on their relationship with teachers and 26% of them stated that internet has positive effect on both their school performance and relationship with the family. The results of regression analysis have revealed that diffusion, moratorium and achievement identity statuses, psychological needs for power and belonging, sensation seeking and satisfaction with life are important predictors for problematic internet use, and that all these variables explain 20% of the total variance. In the research, predictors of female adolescents' problematic internet use were found as belonging and power psychological needs, sensation seeking, diffusion, moratorium and achievement identity statuses. All these variables together explained 17% of the total variance. Predictors of male adolescents' problematic internet use were belonging and power psychological needs, achievement and diffused identity statuses, sensation seeking and life satisfaction. And these variables explained 16% of the total variance. Thus, it can be stated that almost the same predictors are significant for both females and males. In contrast, life satisfaction was not found as significant predictor of females' problematic internet use, and moratorium identity status did not predict males' problematic internet use significantly. Key Words: Problematic internet use, internet addiction, psychological need, identity status, sensation seeking, satisfaction with life, adolescent.