Does Internet affect your life?

Internet has become a part of our day-to-day life and it is difficult to think of life without it; at least for Internet addicts and those who are dependent on it for communication, shopping, booking tickets, paying bills and several other kinds of work. Most of us are addicted to Internet and cannot spent even a few hours without checking what our friends on Facebook or Twitter have updated or how many comments or likes our recent update has received.

This week I bring to you the results of some research done on Internet users to know its impact on them. Some results suggest that excessive usage of Internet makes people lazy; some research claims that it causes sleeping disorders and other health problems while  some others say that it makes us anxious and insecure. Some research even say that users’ pattern of Internet use says something about them.

Tony Dokoupil, who is the co-writer of the Research Report column in the Columbia Journalism Review, says, “The current incarnation of the Internet—portable, social, accelerated, and all-pervasive—may be making us not just dumber or lonelier but more depressed and anxious, prone to obsessive-compulsive and attention-deficit disorders, even outright psychotic.”

There are plentiful of outcomes. But all these research studies are done on a handful of people who are picked randomly. I provide you with the outcomes of some of this research. Most of these studies have been carried out by foreign universities. Find out how far they are correct and see if you can relate yourself or any of your friends with these outcomes.

A recent study by Leeds University found that excessive internet usage is associated with depression but the research fails to explain whether depressed people are drawn to Internet or its excessive usage causes depression.

A study by the University of Salford says that two-thirds of the people who participated in the survey said that they suffer from sleeping problems after using Internet for a long time. More than 50 per cent of the respondents said that their life has changed for worse and several others said they feel uncomfortable and anxious when they don’t use the Internet.

An UK-based non-profit organisation Anxiety states that 45 per cent of the people surveyed feel uncomfortable when they cannot access their Facebook or e-mail accounts and about 65 per cent of the respondents said that they need to switch off their computers and Smart phones to completely break off from them 

Another study by Ohio State University and Open University of The Netherlands states that college students who spend 93 minutes or more time on Facebook daily get 20 per cent lower grades than  students who have not signed up on the website.

Most of these studies show different results but the truth remains the same; Internet does affect our life and its impact depends on how much time does one spend online.