Engl. transl.: Varna High School Students on the Internet – Helpful Time Spent or Harmful Habit

Although time is not a direct function in determining Internet addiction, those who spend more than 35 hours a week online are considered to be at risk of being at high risk for real addiction (Young 1999). Less than 2% of students say they do not spend any time on the Internet; 20% say they spend 1-2 hours a day on the Internet; 35% state that they are online for 3-4 hours a day, one in five says they are online for 5-6 hours every day. In this group, attention should be paid and a timely prevention campaign should be conducted in order to avoid possible network addiction. The data also show that the more time students spend in front of the computer, the less they sleep and the less time they spend eating. The research team expresses the opinion, that special attention should be paid in order to reduce Internet surfing activities in these three groups: those who claim to always be online, instead of sleep; who very often do not sleep to be online; who are often on the Internet, not in bed. For the other groups of students, a preventive campaign is offered in order not to reach a point when it is necessary to limit the stay online. "From the results obtained, we can conclude that in rare cases, the Internet can pointed out as a bad habit that bothers students. In order to be able to comment in more depth on whether or not the stay is harmful to adolescents online, we could now offer research on more different combinations of variables."