Exploring The Relationship Between Personality, Loneliness, Self-Esteem And Internet Addiction

Abstract

Internet addiction is the inability to control one’s Internet usage that results in serious impairment of various aspects of life. There is a direct relationship between poor social support, social-emotional loneliness and internet addiction. Recent research showed that Internet addiction is related to mental health state and that personality traits may affect internet users’ behaviours significantly. The present research aims to explore the relationship of personality traits, loneliness, and self-esteem with internet addiction. More specifically, we aim to test the mediating role of loneliness in the relationship between self-esteem, personality traits, time spent on Internet and Internet addiction. The sample consisted of 227 high-school students. Results showed that conscientiousness and neuroticism were significantly related with internet addiction. Personality traits could be considered both protective and risk factors of problematic Internet use. A positive correlation between loneliness and internet addiction and a negative association between self-esteem and internet addiction were also found. Students who spend more time on Internet, are less conscientiousness and feels lonelier, are more exposed to the risk of addiction. Internet addiction measures could be used to identify students at risk of becoming Internet addicted. Identifying risk and protective factors could be an essential aspect of intervention programs aiming to reduce the prevalence of internet addiction among adolescents.

Keywords: Addiction riskinternet addictionlonelinesspersonalityself-esteem

Introduction

Internet use has rapidly increased in each age group due to numerous facilities, but despite its advantages it can also lead to problematic internet use or internet addiction. Internet addiction is the inability to control one’s internet usage that results in serious impairment of various aspects of life. At younger ages, there is a direct relationship between poor social support, social-emotional loneliness and internet addiction. Recent research showed that Internet addiction is related to mental health state and that personality traits may affect internet users’ behaviours significantly. 2.Background of the study.

Problem Statement

Addiction has been traditionally associated with substance addiction, through the repetitive and excessive use of specific stimulants (e.g. alcohol, cocaine, hallucinogens) (DSM-5, 2013). Individuals can be addicted to excessive behaviours towards work, food, shopping, sex, Internet. Internet addiction refers to the inability of a person to control his/her use of the Internet, leading to noticeable sorrow and functional impairment (Young, 1998) being also called Compulsive Internet Use (CIU), Problematic Internet Use (PIU), or iDisorder. As a recent and increasingly recognized disorder, Internet addiction has received growing attention worldwide, being the subject of numerous debates (Laconi, Rodgers, & Chabrol, 2014). Internet addiction is considered a risky disorder very common among the young, and most often accompanied by other psychiatric disorders (Öztürk, Bektas, Ayar, Oztornacı, & Yagci, 2015). Adolescents are more exposed to the risk of addiction because the time spent on the Internet is the highest for them in comparison with any other age group.

As expected, the interest in Internet addiction has led to the development of scales assessing this disorder. The Internet Addiction Test (IAT - Young, 1998) seems to be the most frequently used scale for Internet Addiction, being validated in more than 28 studies in 17 different languages (Laconi et al., 2014). Recent research showed that Internet use explains 29.2% of the variance of Internet addiction and the associations between IAT with somatic health problems and number of hours slept are weak and comparable to those of Internet use, but the association with wellbeing is higher (Baggio, Iglesias, Berchtold, & Suris, 2016).

Internet addiction was associated with the Big Five personality traits (Cao & Su, 2006; Kayis et al., 2016; Mehroof & Griffiths, 2010; Öztürk et al., 2015), several studies showing that traits such as Consciousness and Openness could be protective factors, while Neuroticism could have a negative impact on the risk of addiction. Loneliness was also positively associated with Internet addiction (Ang, Chan, & Lee, 2018; Bardi & Brady, 2010) and lower self-esteem has been found to correlate significantly with Internet addiction (Yang & Tung, 2007).

Research Questions

The following research questions were formulated:

Are there associations between the personality traits, loneliness and the risk of Internet addiction?

Are there gender and academic specialization differences concerning Internet addiction and Loneliness?

Purpose of the Study

The current study explores the association between Romanian adolescents' Internet use and risk of addiction and the Big Five personality traits, self-esteem and loneliness. More specifically, we aim to test the mediating role of loneliness in the relationship between self-esteem, personality traits, time spent on Internet and Internet addiction. We also aim to highlight the existence of gender and academic specialization differences concerning Internet addiction and Loneliness.

Research Methods

Findings

Neuroticism and Conscientiousness were negatively related with internet addiction. The Pearson correlation coefficients were weak, but statistically significant. The other personality traits seemed to be unrelated with the Internet addiction (Table 01 ). A positive correlation between loneliness and Internet addiction and a negative association between self-esteem and Internet addiction were also found. As expected, low neurotic and high extraverted individuals had lower levels of Loneliness (the correlations being medium and negative). Loneliness correlated negatively also with Agreeableness, although the correlation is weak.

Gender and academic specialization differences concerning Internet addiction and Loneliness were also tested. The independent t tests did not reveal gender differences for the Internet addiction, but significant differences were found for Loneliness, girls having higher levels of Loneliness compared to boys. Internet addiction did not show different levels for students from different specialisation, while Humanities students had significantly higher levels of Loneliness (Table 02 ).

The Pearson correlation coefficients were also computed to highlight if Internet addiction, loneliness and self-esteem were associated with the time spent online or spent with friend. We found only two weak, but statistically significant coefficients, showing that students at risk of addiction spent more time online at home and on social networks (Table 04 ). Self-esteem and Loneliness were unrelated to the time spent online. Gender and academic specialisation regarding the time spent online were also not significant.

Our study also revealed the mediating role of loneliness in the relationship between self-esteem, personality traits, time spent on Internet and Internet addiction (Figure 01 ). The associations between personality traits, Loneliness, Time spent on Internet and Internet addiction led us to a more complex model: we tested a mediation model, using Conscientiousness, Neuroticism, Self-esteem and Time on Internet as exogenous variables, Loneliness as mediator and Internet addiction as dependent variable. The model had good fit indices (Kline, 2011) (Table 04 ).

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The path analysis showed that most of the direct effects were significant, while the indirect effects were not significant. Therefore, our last hypothesis was not fully confirmed (Table 05 ). Neuroticism had a strong negative effect on Loneliness, showing that high neurotic individuals tend to express more feelings of social isolation. The most powerful direct effects on Internet addiction was the positive effect of the Time spent on Internet at home. Conscientiousness had a negative effect and Loneliness had a positive direct effect. Thus, students who spend more time on Internet, are less conscientiousness and feels lonelier, are more exposed to the risk of addiction. The direct effect of Neuroticism on Internet addiction was not significant.

Conclusion

Although the present research highlighted significant associations between personality traits, loneliness, self-esteem and Internet addiction, future research is needed to expand the exploration of the connections between these issues. Other factors associated with Internet addiction that are not considered in this research such as problematic Internet use, types of activities online, depression, anxiety, may also lead to interesting results.

Internet addiction measures could be used in order to identify students at risk of becoming Internet addicted. Identifying risk and protective factors could be an essential aspect of intervention programs aiming to reduce the prevalence of internet addiction among adolescents. The results of the present research offers teachers and school psychologists ideas about modalities efficient for young adolescents to overcome feelings of loneliness in regard to Internet addiction.

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