Internet Use and Mental Health among College Students in Malawi

The Internet and social media have become central in human interrelations, shaping how people share their life experiences and communicate. However, previous studies suggest that internet addiction among university students may lead to disruption of relationships, social isolation, depression and neglect of schoolwork. Despite a growing acknowledgement of the negative aspects of excessive Internet use, there is still a dearth of studies on the subject, especially in Sub-Saharan Africa. This chapter therefore explores the phenomenon of addictive Internet use among college students in Malawi and how this relates to probable cases of common mental disorders (CMD). The chapter applies a combination of the Internet Addiction Test (IAT) and the Self-Report Questionnaire (SRQ-20). Among students who were identified to have significant problems because of usage of Internet most frequently, females (58%, 29/50) were more reported than males (42 %, 21/50). Nevertheless, males (65.5%, 262/400) were still noted to experience frequent problems because of excessive Internet use than females (34.5 %, 138/400). Furthermore, addiction to internet was found to be associated with mental disorder symptoms (p-value = 0.004) among these students with more males (55.7 %) than females (44.3 %) being identified as affected by existence of a probable CMD. Lastly, this chapter has established that there is strong positive correlation between internet addiction and probable CMD (p-value < 0.01) among college students in Malawi. While acknowledging that correlation does not necessarily mean causation, it is important to recognize that excessive usage of Internet may increase the vulnerability to CMD in college students in Malawi.

Key words: Addiction, Internet Addition, Social media, Common Mental Disorder, Self-reporting questionnaire (SRQ-20)

https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-13593-5_16