Student Internet Use at UMass Amherst

By Gary D. Malaney
Director, SAREO
Coordinator, Higher Education Program
University of Massachusetts Amherst
malaney@educ.umass.edu

Posted: January, 2004 Student Affairs Online, vol. 5 no. 1 - Winter 2004

Since I arrived at the University of Massachusetts Amherst in 1987, our assessment office has periodically surveyed our undergraduates regarding their use of computersą. The changes in students’ use and ownership of personal computers have been remarkable since our first survey in 1988. At that time, we found that 37.5% of the students did not use a personal computer at all, and when asked how many hours they used a personal computer in a typical week, 42.3% of the students reported zero and another 41.4% indicated between 1 and 5 hours per week (Malaney & Thurman, 1989b). We also found that only 22% of the undergraduates owned a personal computer (Malaney & Thurman, 1989a).

Needless to say, things are a lot different today. In fact, many changes had occurred by 1996, which marks approximately the half-way point between that first survey and our most recent survey in Fall 2003. In 1996, we found that 94.3% of the undergraduates used a personal computer, 34.8% of which used one “almost daily” (UMass Amherst, 1996). We also discovered that 45.1% of the students owned their own computer. In that survey, we asked the students some questions regarding how they used their computers, and interestingly, at that time 33% of the students still never used email and 55% never used the Internet or “Worldwide Web,” as we called it in that survey.

Of course, in 2003, use of personal computers is pretty much a fact of life for the average college student. Communicating via email (or more aptly Instant Messenger) is a daily phenomenon for the average UMass undergraduate. The Internet is a major part of students’ lives in both school work and personal recreation. This past fall when we surveyed our students regarding their computer use, we asked “how often do you access the Internet to use email, Instant Messenger, or the World Wide Web?” and 89.6% said “every day,” and another 7.8% said “almost every day.” The students reported spending an average of 3.46 (mean) (median = 2.25) hours per day on the Internet. Of course, these figures should not be that surprising, because this generation has been raised on the Net. Our students started using the Net when they were 13 years old on average (mean = 13.12, median = 13.0).

Student affairs professionals have a growing concern regarding how students are spending their time on the Internet (Kruger, 2003), and we asked our students specifically about their time on the Net. We discovered that 98.3% of our students had spent at least some time on the Internet in the seven days prior to being surveyed, and we asked them several questions about how they had spent their computer time over those seven days. Using Instant Messenger alone amounted to an average (mean) of 10.63 hours per week (5.0 = median). It was by far the largest use of computer time, followed by (a) “using the Internet for your college course work” (mean = 5.1 hours per week; median = 3.0), (b) “using the Internet for other activities, for example visiting web sites for information like the news or weather, or just for fun” (mean = 4.2; median = 2.0), and “Email” (mean = 2.35; median = 1.0). Other uses like playing games, downloading music, shopping, or chat rooms involved much less time. When all of these activities were totaled, students estimated that they averaged 28.36 hours per week on the Internet.

Student affairs professionals also are concerned as to whether too much time on the Net might have a detrimental effect on a student’s quality of life (Kruger, 2003). We have been studying this topic for a few years at UMass Amherst (Malaney & Williams, 2002), and in our survey this past fall we asked several questions related to this concern. We asked a battery of questions regarding how often the students did something related to the Internet or computers, and the response set for these items was “never, rarely, sometimes, often, and very often.” We discovered that students generally spent more time on the Internet than they planned and easily lost track of how much time they were spending on the Net. When asked, “How often do you find that you have remained on the Internet much longer than you had intended?” only 6.5% said “never,” and 71.2% said at least sometimes (7.8% indicated “very often”). When asked “How often do you lose track of time or get surprised by how much has elapsed?” only 12.2% said “never,” and 59.3% said it happened at least sometimes (6.2% said “very often”). We also discovered that over 30% of the students reported that they had tried to cut back on using the Internet and had been unsuccessful. And of that group (n = 181), over half (51.4%) reported that they had experienced feelings of restlessness or irritability when they had attempted to cut back or stop using the Internet.

Although there certainly appears to be a large number of students using the Internet an extraordinary amount of time, the students generally do not feel that their Internet use is negatively impacting their lives. Around 90% reported that they have not “lied to family members, friends, teachers, or counselors to conceal the extent of their involvement with the Internet.” And 90% reported that they have not “missed class, appointments, or work because of their use of the Internet.” Also, 87.7% reported that “their grades have not suffered because of spending too much time on the Internet.” Although the vast majority of students appear to be fine regarding their Internet use, a cursory analysis of these data indicate that at least 10% of the students might be susceptible to problems regarding their overuse of the Internet.

Certainly, overuse of the Internet is not a new concern. Several authors have written recently on this topic, including Kimberly Young who has written extensively on the issue of Internet dependency, including the first popular book on the subject, Caught in the Net (Young, 1998a), and a couple years ago she wrote a related article for StudentAffairs On-Line (Young, 2001). In one study, Young (1998b) estimated that 16.8% of her respondents met the criteria she established for Internet dependence. A closer analysis of the UMass data, may reveal similar findings.

As Kruger (2003) noted, student affairs professionals need to make themselves aware of students who are spending too much time on Internet related activities and especially those students who express negative feelings pertaining to Internet behavior. Young (2001) gave several points of advice that all educators can pursue while investigating this perhaps growing problem of Internet abuse. Not surprisingly, educating students and staff on the dangers of spending too much time on-line is at the top of her list. She suggested implementing educational awareness programs in residence halls and inviting guest speakers to campus to discuss cyber behavior. And she suggested getting students more involved in more traditional social behaviors. It is unlikely that students’ on-line activities are going to diminish anytime soon, so student affairs professionals and faculty need to be ready to address potential problems that arise.

Notes

ąOur telephone survey operation is based on random sample surveys, typically of the entire undergraduate population. Details of the operation can be found at http://www.umass.edu/sareo/. The 1988 and 1996 samples were drawn from the entire undergraduate student body and consisted of 308 and 570 respondents, respectively, and the response rates for the surveys were 39.2% and 49.6%, respectively. The 2003 sample was drawn from on-campus undergraduates only, and the study consisted of 606 respondents with a 67.6% response rate.

References

Kruger, K. (2003). Conducting research or instant messaging?: How students use computers. Leadership Exchange: Solutions for Student Affairs Management, 1(4), 22-23.

Malaney, G. D., & Thurman, Q. (1989a). Student opinions regarding the mandatory use and ownership of personal computers. Journal of Educational Technology Systems, 17(4), 297-306.

Malaney, G. D., & Thurman, Q. (1989b). Key factors in the use and frequency of use of microcomputers by college students. Journal of Educational Technology Systems, 18(2), 151-160.

Malaney, G. D., & Williams, E. A. (2002, June). Students spending too much time on the Internet: A new concern for higher education. Paper presented at the annual meeting of the Association for Institutional Research, Toronto.

University of Massachusetts Amherst, Student Assessment, Research and Evaluation Office. (1996). Computer use survey. Retrieved January 2, 2004, from the SAREO Project Pulse Web site: http://www.umass.edu/sareo/pp_home.html

Young, K. S. (1998a). Caught in the net: How to recognize the signs of Internet addiction – and a winning strategy for recovery. New York: J. Wiley.

Young, K. S. (1998b). Internet addiction: The emergence of a new clinical disorder. CyberPsychology & Behavior, 1(3), 237-244.

Young, K. (2001). Surfing not studying: Dealing with Internet addiction on campus. StudentAffairs Online, 2(1). Retrieved January 5, 2004, from http://studentaffairs.com/ejournal/Winter_2001/addiction.html.