ICT usage and Impact on Undergraduates'Psychological Well- Being

Abstract

Globalisation has changed human lives in the era of ICT. ICT has become an important source of innovation across the globe. Though there are positive social and educational benefits of ICT use, scholarly attention is now on identifying whether ICT usage is harmful since it is related to psychological aspects. On the other hand, ICT usage is comparatively and significantly higher among university students. Therefore, identifying the impact of ICT usage on the psychological well-being of students is crucial for the higher education sector. This study mainly focused on examining how factors like smartphone usage, social media usage, internet usage, device usage, video gaming and -being. To achieve the proposed research objectives, the quantitative research method was adopted, and data was gathered in the form of primary data through self-administered structured questionnaires. 383 undergraduates from the state universities of Sri Lanka participated in the study and the stratified sampling technique was employed. Collected data was analysed using the SPSS package and basic descriptive statistics, correlation analysis, and stepwise regression tests were run in order to examine ICT usage and its impact on the psychological well-being of undergraduates. Consequently, the findings revealed that social media usage, internet usage, and television viewing have significant positive impacts, while video gaming has a significant negative impact on the psychological well being of undergraduates. Meanwhile, smartphone usage and device usage have no significant impact on psychological well-being. Further, internet usage is the most influential factor of ICT usage, which has the strongest predicting power on psychological well-being. The findings of the study would be beneficial to university students, parents, academic and non-academic staff, social media developers, etc. for further improvements.