Internet addiction among rural adolescents from western India

Background: Internet addiction is defined as the psychological addiction to the internet and characterized as increasing investment to the activities on internet, unpleasant emotions when offline, increasing tolerance to the effect of become online and denial of the problematic behaviors. Objective: To study the amount of addiction of internet or internet overuse among the adolescents. Methodology: It was a Cross Sectional study among adolescents studying in the colleges of Sangli district in Western Maharashtra. Calculated sample size was 244. Sampling technique was convenience sampling. Study Tools was Problematic Internet Use Questionnaire (PIUQ). All the requisite ethical clearance, permissions and consents were obtained. Statistical analysis done using SPSS-22. Results: There were 251 study participants with the mean age 18.45 (±1.67) years. The mean PIUQ score of the study participants was 41.90 (±13.65). Mean score for females was lower as compared to males. Conclusion: There is a notable internet addiction among the youth especially males.