THE CHARACTER OF INTERNET-DEPENDENT TEENAGERS’ INTERPERSONAL INTERACTION

Abstract

Purpose. The investigation of the Internet dependent teenagers’ interaction was aimed at verifying how the Internet dependence affects the character of Internet addicted and Internet-independent teens’ interpersonal relationships. Presupposition that the Internet-dependence in some way affects the nature of interpersonal interaction in adolescence was chosen as a conceptual hypothesis. According to empirical hypotheses, the character of interpersonal interaction of Internet addicted teens is determined with: the differences in forms and directions of personal interaction, which differ in the terms of aggression and self-control, and are predominantly dependent and subordinate for the Internet dependent teenagers; differences in the indicators of mental states manifestations (anxiety, frustration, aggressiveness, rigidity), which are higher for the Internet-dependent adolescents; the connection between the level of Internet dependence and indicators of some teenagers’ personality characteristics .

Methods. The following methods were chosen for the empirical research: The Internet Addiction Test (IAT) by Kimberly Young, The Test of the Internet Dependence by S.A. Kulakov, Interpersonal Diagnosis of Personality by T. Leary, Cattell’s 16 Personality Factors Test, Method of self-assessment of mental states by H. Eysenck.

Results. The study involved adolescents aged 13 to 15 in the amount of 84 students, among whom 60 were selected from the pilot sample (30 with high and 30 with low levels of Internet dependency). After checking the data for the normality of distribution, the Mann-Whitney criterion was chosen for the comparative analysis, and the Spearman’s rank correlation coefficient was used for the correlation analysis.

The obtained results have given the opportunity to confirm the empirical hypotheses as follows: it has been proved that the ordinary Internet users choose an altruistic style, while the Internet-dependent tend to subordinate and dependent type of interpersonal interaction; statistically significant differences between the indicators of manifestations of mental states (anxiety, frustration, aggressiveness, rigidity) have been found, and they are higher for the Internet-dependent adolescents; the correlation between the level of the Internet-dependence and indices of anxiety, impulsivity and practicality has been set up.

Conclusions. These facts – the differences in forms and directions of personal interaction, differences in the indicators of mental states manifestations and the connection between the level of Internet dependence and indicators of some teenagers’ personality characteristics determine the specifics of the Internet addicted teenagers’ interpersonal interaction.