LITERATURE REVIEW

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 LITERATURE REVIEW

Research conducted on the impact of internet usage upon students has been diverse. The
Internet has become an essential component of peoples everyday life throughout the
world. These ranges from the way people seek information, conduct research, perform
business transactions, and communicate with others and various other features. According
to the (World Internet Users and Populations Statistics, 2011), the internet has become a
valuable source of information for students who have become technological information
seekers both academically and socially.

Students who spend more time online, spend less time watching television, playing video
games, and reading. According to (Ruzgar, 2005), in a study entitled A Research on the
Purpose of Internet Usage and Learning via the Internet. Ruzgar conducted an online
survey at High Schools in Portage, Chicago to obtain student views about intensity of
Internet use. It was noted that students used the internet to receive and send assignments
to teachers, access classroom notes, as well as to engage in group forums or discussion
boards with teachers and classmates after school hours in order to complete projects or
assessments. Lecture notes and online quizzes were also accessible to them from home
via the internet. Ruzgar believed that web based education was gradually phasing out face
to face education.

It was further noted that many students used the internet for social networking sites such
as Face Book, Instagram, Snapchat, and Skype and other social sites. Thus, spending
more time online than they should be. According to (Ala, 2015), in a study entitled,
Impact of Social Networking Sites on Student Academic Performance,he noted that
students always logged into their account such as Facebook and Twitter as part of their
everyday routine. Although, these sites maybe positive in that it helped students cope
with stress, they were also deemed negative as it caused unnecessary distractions, taking
time away from completing their school work

The advent of the widespread use of the Internet in the 1990s was met with both fear and
enthusiasm regarding the potential impact on social relationships and psychological well-
being (Bargh& McKenna, 2004). However, a relatively early study by Kraut and
associates (Kraut et al., 1998) seemed to set the tone for much of the research that would
follow. They found that use of the Internet appeared to increase loneliness, depression,
and stress among a sample of 169 high school students. They called this the, Internet
Paradox in that a technology that theoretically would increase communication could

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instead have negative social and psychological effects. Later research by the same
researcher (Kraut et al. 2002), revealed a reverse in the results showing that it did not lead
to significant negative social and psychological effects. Even though the results were
reversed in the follow-up study published several years later (Kraut et al. 2002), the
original study inspired a significant amount of research designed to assess potential
negative effects of Internet use on high school students.

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