The article develops an understanding of the retrogressive impacts of rampant Internet use, online gaming, and online gambling among individuals in their tertiary education levels. The researchers refute the previous works of literature that have analyzed the significance of the Internet, whereby previous studies depict that the Internet plays a significant role in preventing depression ordeals and making people happy (Kalkan & Bhat 18). Despite the Internet being helpful to students in conducting their studies and visiting different social media platforms, this article presents a comprehension that Internet use causes dysfunctional online behaviors, impairing college students’ lives. Therefore, the authors aim at outlining the relationship between online gambling, Internet use, and online gaming with life quality and depression among students that are in college, warning learners that they should embrace responsibility.
Most college students accumulating to ninety-eight percent, have smartphones and other technological gadgets that play a critical role in helping them access and navigate through the Internet. According to Kalkan and Bhat, college learners spend about twenty hours online on different social media websites per week, whereby the trend seems severe among the youngest group, between the age of eighteen to thirty (21). The majority of the participants claim that they engage in online gaming and gambling apart from visiting social media platforms because they perceive it as a better option than loitering in public places. Understandably, it means that students spend and waste a whole day out of the seven days in a week, whereby the time could have been spent doing other essential issues that might enhance their lives. The authors opine that many of the mental health problems among U.S. college students arise from the Internet, online gaming, and gambling.
The researchers used the non-experimental method to realize the aforementioned findings. The non-experimental strategy incorporated descriptive analysis of the previous materials and literature to comprehend the impact of online gambling, gaming, and Internet use. The non-experimental approach incorporates comparing the multiple types of research on a topic and then developing findings based on the research. Moreover, the authors have used different materials that contradict each other about the subject and subsequently developed critical findings after conducting a thorough analysis of the diverse resources. The questionnaire method used in the study incorporated the Precision Efficacy Analysis for Regression (PEAR) approach in sampling the 222 participants aged between eighteen to sixty-nine years, whereby the average age is 25.04 years (Kalkan & Bhat 21). PEAR involves the analysis of observable traits in people who engage in different practices related to the area of study. It entails critical analysis and creating findings based on what an individual says. The PEAR method presented three questions, whereby one was a descriptive question, asking about the pervasiveness of challenging online gaming, Internet use, online gambling among college scholars. The second and third questions asked whether there is a connection between depression and life quality with the rectilinear amalgamation of challenging online gaming, Internet use, online gambling among multiple college students.
In conclusion, Internet use, online gaming, and gambling have retrogressive impacts including addiction, anxiety, and depression among college students as per the findings obtained from the study sample. Ease availability of the Internet makes it possible for students to gamble, whereby they end up losing and subsequently developing incidences of depression and addiction. When students bet, they have higher expectations, hence triggering their anxiety. Later, when one loses the bet, they become stressed and, consequently, develop depression incidences that greatly affect their life. Therefore, this research is vital as it educates the readers regarding the importance of being cautious since, regardless of having tremendous impacts on the audience, it can lead to flaws related to dysfunctional online behaviors.
Work Cited
Kalkan, Bilal, and Christine Suniti Bhat. “Relationships of Problematic Internet Use, Online Gaming, and Online Gambling with Depression and Quality of Life among College Students.” International Journal of Contemporary Educational Research, vol. 7, no. 1, 2020, pp. 18-28.