Status of Internet Addiction among College Students in South Korea.

Abstract

Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to examine the status of internet Addiction among college students of South Korea. Design/method/approach: Data was collected from 426 Korean university students using a modified survey instrument developed previously by Young (2009) for this purpose. Findings: Results showed a higher level of Internet Addiction (10%) compared to the previous studies. It was also noted that the Internet Addiction is not gender specific since Internet dependency was not significantly different between males and females. Similarly, the logistic regression analysis showed that among the factors, education, emotion, time management, and mood index are all significantly associated with internet addiction for the Korean college students. Originality/value: The findings from this study addresses a gap in the literature, and provides for future comparative studies be conducted on the engagement of students with social networking sites to better understand internet addiction.