The impact of information and communication technology usage on psychological well-being among undergraduates

Abstract

Globalization has undoubtedly changed human lives during the era of Information and Communication Technology (ICT). ICT has become a substantial source of innovation across the globe. Though there are positive social and educational benefits of ICT use, scholars are currently attempting to identify whether ICT usage is destructive since it is related to the psychological aspects. When reviewing each research paper and other data source individually, there is a dearth of the extensive literature in pertinence with this research area in the Sri Lankan context. Therefore, this study primarily focuses on examining how the factors: smartphone usage, social media usage, Internet usage, device usage, video gaming, and television viewing influence undergraduates’ psychological well-being. To achieve the proposed research objective, the quantitative research method was adopted. Primary data were gathered through self-administered structured questionnaires from the undergraduates in a state university of Sri Lanka. The SPSS package was used to analyze the collected data. Basic descriptive statistics, and stepwise regression tests were performed to determine the answer to the research questions. Consequently, the key findings revealed that social media usage, internet usage, and television viewing have a positive significant impact and video gaming has a negative significant impact on psychological well-being. However, smartphone usage and device usage have no significant impact on psychological well-being. Moreover, 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 the university students, parents, academic and non-academic staff, social media developers, mobile applications developers, and television providers to properly respond to this emergent phenomenon.