Determination of problematic internet usage and healthy lifestyle behaviors in firat university students

This study has been done with the purpose of determining the problematic internet usage and healthy lifestyle behaviors in Fırat University students.The students of Fırat University constituted the universe of the study. 1723 students were included in the study. The students were chosen according to the stratified sampling method in view of their departments, grades and genders. A questionnaire form including socio-demographic features and scales of problematic internet usage and healthy lifestyle behaviors was applied to the students.The average age of the students is 21.5±2.2. 67.3% of the students are men, 30.9% are in fourth grade or over and 25.4% study in Faculty of Science and Letters. 50.9% of the students connect to internet at least 6 days in a week and 21.4% of them connect to the internet around 2 hours in a day. The main purposes of the internet usage are checking his/her e-mail address (87.8%), reading newspapers and journals (63.4%) and playing online games (28.4%). And mostly seen problems connected with the long-term internet usage are burning in the eyes, pain in trapezius muscles and sleeplessness. 14.6% of the students have problematic internet usage behavior. Problematic internet usage is high in male students who study in fourth grade, have their own computers, prefer connecting to the internet at night and whose parents? educational level and income level are high. The problematic internet usage scale has been found to be high in the students who are experiencing sleeplessness problem frequently, smoking cigarette and whose physical activities are low. And the healthy lifestyle behaviors get high as the parents? educational level, income level and the situation of working in an income generating work increase. Healthy lifestyle behavior point average is meaningfully high in the students who use the internet for reading their e-mails, reading newspapers and journals and joining discussion groups. A significant negative correlation has been found between healthy lifestyle behaviors and problematic internet scale points.It has been seen that the problematic internet usage in students affect the healthy lifestyle behaviors negatively. Measures that will decrease the problematic internet usage and improve the healthy lifestyle behaviors should be taken.Key words: problematic internet usage, healthy lifestyle behaviors, university student, internet, education.