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Internet Heavy Use and Addiction among Taiwanese
College Students: An Online Interview Study

Introduction

In recent years, the Internet has become the most popular consumer technology and is changing the way people all over the world live and communicate. Taiwan’s first network infrastructure, Tanet, has been in existence since 1990, and connects all schools and major research institutes. Tanet has provided convenient and free access to faculty and most students. However, over involvement with the Internet on college campuses has occasionally been observed and reported. Some students have exhibited Internet addiction symptoms, such as heavy preoccupation with the Internet, excessive online time, compulsive behavior, and time-management problems.

Kandell stated that college students as a group appear more vulnerable to developing dependence on the Internet than any other segment of society, probably because college students have strong drives to develop firm senses of identity, and to develop meaningful and intimate relationships. In Taiwan, most students leave their homes and move toward independent lives when they enter college. Many reside in school dormitories and have convenient and free Internet access through school network systems. They find the Internet to be an important window through which they can communicate and interact with the world. Further, college students usually have free and easily accessed connections, meaning that Internet use is both implicitly and explicitly encouraged by a recognized, institutional authority. Therefore, Grohol suggests that societal acceptance of the Internet and the effects of labeling Internet use are additional issues that must be taken into consideration when we study Internet addiction or heavy use. Therefore, inspecting the substituting net time for generally accepted television time became one of the interview questions for this study. The implications of Grohol’s observations are that Internet use hours should not be the only factor used to judge Internet addiction, and that observations of online behaviors should not be on temporal bases only.

However, from previous studies, it can be found that user time is an important index for research of Internet addiction. For example, in Young’s study, 396 Internet-dependent subjects reported a striking average of 38.5 h/week spent online, compared to 4.9 h of nondependent Internet users. In Chou and Hsiao’s study, 54 Internet addicts spent 20–25 h/week connected to the Internet—almost triple the number of hours that 856 nonaddicts spent. The fact that addicted (or dependent) individuals spend more time online than nonaddicts has been empirically verified, and remains an important component of research and analysis.

Online activity or application is another factor used by researchers to evaluate Internet addiction. Young reports that dependents primarily use two-way communication functions such as chatrooms, multi-user dimensions or multi-user dungeons (MUDs), newsgroups, and e-mail, while nondependents use information-gathering functions available on the Internet, such as information protocols and the World Wide Web (WWW). Chou and Hsiao’s study reports that an addicted group spent more time on electronic bulletin board systems (BBS) and e-mail than the nonaddicted group. However, it was found that the addicted group also spent more time on the WWW than the nonaddicted group. This study reports that BBS use hours and e-mail use hours are two powerful factors in predicting Internet addiction.

Heavy Internet users often report problems caused by excessive Internet use. Time distortion is a significant and frequently reported problem. Users who spend a significant amount of time online often experience academic, relational, financial, and occupational difficulties, as well as physical impairments. For example, students may have difficulty completing homework assignments, studying, and getting sufficient sleep to meet their academic responsibilities (such as getting up and getting to class). Chou and Hsiao report that the addicted group rated the impact of heavy Internet use on studies and daily living as significantly worse than the nonaddict group. Results showed that most heavy users had experienced one or more negative impacts, but how they coped with these consequences was still unclear from this early work. Did they cut down their Internet use time or reduce the time they spent on daily activities and chores? Were they successful in compensating for the exorbitant amount of time spent on the Internet? This paper focuses on these questions.

Young reports that Internet-dependents gradually spent less time with friends and family in exchange for solitary time in front of a computer. Brenner also reports that some respondents experienced increasing social isolation except for Internet friends. However, Chou and Hsiao’s study found that both addicted and nonaddicted groups experienced the impact of Internet use on their relationships with friends/schoolmates as positive, because they felt that the Internet provided them with opportunities to meet new people, with more topics to share, and with additional, if not primary, tools for communicating with old friends.

Suler posits that whether Internet use is healthy, pathologically addictive, or somewhere in between is determined by the cluster of needs that Internet use fulfills, and how, exactly, those needs are met. In particular, Suler addresses two interpersonal needs: the need to belong and the need for relationships. Both of these needs can be observed among Taiwan’s college students. When most students enter college, they are separated from their families and treated as adults by society—often for the first time. These late adolescents must contend with two important tasks: developing a sense of belonging and identify, and developing new, meaningful relationships. Suler states that, in this sense, the Internet is more than just an information superhighway; it is also a powerful social domain. Kandell observes that college students may overuse two-way Internet communication applications such as chatrooms, email, and MUD games in an effort to accomplish these difficult tasks. The danger lies in overuse, making these activities the central focus of their lives. Young concludes that, while the Internet itself is not addictive, specific applications with interactive, embedded features appear to play a significant role in the development of pathological Internet use. Therefore, one major focus of our study was which Internet applications subjects most often used, how they used them, and what impacts the applications had on their daily activities.

This paper presents results from a 3-year national project entitled “Internet Addiction among Taiwan Students.” The quantitative results of the first year were presented in Chou and Hsiao’s study, which described the overt behaviors of Internet addicts—in particular, network usage patterns. As Griffiths comments, however, the survey method, at best, indicates that Internet addiction may be prevalent in a significant minority of individuals. He suggests that other empirical techniques such as in-depth qualitative interviews are required. Therefore, the present study continues the focus on Taiwan college students, but includes in-depth interviews with subjects to further investigate the reasons for Internet heavy use and addiction, and the impact of such behavior.