Patterns of internet use and mental health of high school students in Istria County, Croatia: cross-sectional study

Aim: To examine associations between different forms of internet use and a number of psychological variables related to mental health in adolescents. Methods: A cross-sectional survey was carried out on a representative sample of students (N = 1539) from all high schools in the region of Istria in Croatia (14-19 years). The associations between four factors of internet use and nine mental health indicators were analyzed using canonical correlation analysis. Results: The four canonical functions suggested a significant association between different types of internet use and specific indicators of mental health (P < 0.001). Problematic internet use, more typical among boys, was associated with general aggressive behavior and substance abuse (P < 0.001). Experiences of harassment, more typical among girls, were associated with health complaints, symptoms of depression, loneliness, and fear of negative evaluation (P < 0.001). Using the internet for communication and entertainment was associated with better relationships with peers (P < 0.001), while use of the internet for academic purposes was associated with conscientiousness (P < 0.001). Conclusion: The results suggest that different patterns of internet use are significantly associated with specific sets of positive and negative mental health indicators. The data support the assumption that internet use can have both positive and adverse effects on the mental health of youth.

"With regard to internet use, boys were typically found to be more prone to use unauthorized content and falsely identify themselves on the internet (P < 0.001), while girls were significantly more likely to use the internet for meeting academic obligations. With regard to psychological variables, boys expressed overt aggression significantly more often than girls (P < 0.001), while girls reported significantly more health complaints and symptoms of depression (P <0.001). However, girls were also significantly more likely to develop better and more honest friendships (P < 0.001)." Beznović et al, 2015, 301 "There is an association betwee patterns of internet use and specific sets of mental health indicators. The first canonical function refers to the syndrome of problem behavior, in this case characterized by false identification on the internet, downloading unauthorized content, and watching pornographic sites, as well as aggressive behavior and alcohol abuse in real life. This finding confirms the first hypothesis that problematic forms of internet use are associated with negative indicators of mental health, and primarily with externalized symptoms. The second canonical function describes the victimization experience, ie, harassment and threats on the internet, which was significantly associated with internalized symptoms of depression, anxiety, loneliness, and health complaints. Together, these two canonical functions accounted for 51.8% of the variance and represent significant patterns of associations between internet use and mental health. It is important to note that these results confirmed the syndrome of problematic online behavior to be more characteristic for boys while victimizing patterns were more characteristic for girls. Together, these findings confirm the set hypotheses and the premises of the aforementioned theories. The third and the fourth canonical functions describe internet use for the purpose of communication/entertainment and for school purposes, respectively, and are thus associated with positive indicators of mental health, positive social relationships, and a higher level of conscientiousness as personality traits. Although they accounted for a lesser proportion of the variance, these two canonical functions describe potentially interesting patterns of association between internet use and mental health. Namely, these findings suggest that communication technologies may have some positive effects because they enable faster and easier communication, networking, friendship-making, and completion of school tasks." Beznović et al, 2015, 303