Personality traits associated with Internet addiction among college students in South India

Abstract Usage of Internet and electronic gadgets have become a part of our daily life. Especially, nowadays students need to use Internet for various purposes including academic activities. But the uncontrollable use of Internet can interfere one’s daily activities and may develop an addictive behaviour. The current study was aimed to find the difference of personality traits among people who are addicted and non-addicted to Internet. It was also intended to find the influence of personality traits on Internet addiction. The sample consisted of 421 students collected by multistage random sampling method from Kerala, India, age ranging from 18 to 25 (mean = 20.09). NEO FFI-3 and Internet Addiction Test were used for data collection. Neuroticism was significantly higher among the addicted participants, while personality traits such as agreeableness and conscientiousness were more among the non-addicted students. Along with this, neuroticism was positively correlated with Internet addiction, whereas openness to experience, agreeableness and conscientiousness were negatively correlated. Furthermore, the study observed that neuroticism, extraversion, agreeableness and conscientiousness can predict Internet addiction. Besides, Internet addiction was found to be more among males than females. Similarly, nuclear family members were having more addiction than participants from joint family.


Introduction
Internet doubtless has become a huge part of our lives. Many people in today's generation depend on Internet in order to do a lot of different tasks. Especially after the pandemic, students have no other

PUBLIC INTEREST STATEMENT
Over the years, Internet has become a necessity in our day-to-day life activities. Using Internet is not a harmful deed, but depending on Internet uncontrollably can interfere the normal functioning of an individual. Understanding the risk factors associated with the uncontrollable use of Internet would help people to identify and prevent those elements beforehand. Personality factors which determine the uniqueness of an individual are one among the prominent factors that leads to problematic Internet use. Therefore, the present study was designed to find the influence of various personality factors on Internet addiction. Hence, the current study provides an understanding about the vulnerable individual elements which may result in an over-dependence on Internet.
choice than to use Internet and other electronic gadgets for their academic activities and other purposes. Due to the technological advancement, peer pressure and changing social circumstances, college students may heavily rely on Internet facilities to meet their needs and demands. They are using Internet and other gadgets not only for their academic matters but also for other activities such as shopping, browsing, texting, and entertainment. The Internet itself is undoubtedly an unharmful device that was originally designed to encourage research among academic and military agencies (Young, 2004). But later, the use of Internet and electronic gadgets has increased tremendously, as the technology developed. Although Internet is a neutral thing, the way some people use this medium has encouraged the mental health community to discuss Internet addiction (Young, 1999).
Reports clearly indicate that Internet usage has been rising across the globe, especially over the last few years. As of January 2021, 59.5% of the world population uses Internet (DataReportal, 2021). Asia has the largest number of Internet users with China and India in the topmost ranks (Johnson, 2021). In 2020, 50% of the Indian population were using Internet which constitutes almost 687.6 million people (Statista, n.d.; Kemp, 2020). Data estimations from different sources expect that India would be having about 1 billion Internet users by 2025 (Analytics Insight, 2020). According to the reports in the Times of India, 34% of the Internet users in India belong to the age group of 20-29 and Kerala is one of the top most state in India which has a high level of Internet penetration (Mishra & Chanchani, 2020;). Internet penetration refers to the percentage of population uses of Internet.
India is in a phase of rapid change since the last decade. Not only the developmental changes but the public's perspectives and life styles are also advancing. Studies and reports mention the structural and functional changes of basic Indian family system from joint family to nuclear family (Dhami, 2020;Pradhan, 2011). Similarly, the disparity between the facilities available in urban and rural areas are also declining. Recent reports indicate that there is no much difference in regard to Internet usage in rural and urban areas. In fact, there is a gradual surge seen in the Indian rural online users (Mishra & Chanchani, 2020).
People who are using Internet in an uncontrollable manner may share some common characteristics that constitute their personality structure. Personality is defined as "an individual's unique and relatively stable patterns of behaviour, thoughts, and feelings" (Baron, 2001). Although personality is described in different ways, in general, it includes the relatively stable patterns of internal and external aspects of a person's character that would cause an impact on behaviour in various situations. Therefore, it can be assumed that certain personality traits (individual characteristics) would be responsible for the unusual use of Internet (Lee & Lim, 2020;Sum & Hamsan, 2016).
The current study mainly tried to find the influence of different personality traits on Internet addiction among college students. It also identified the difference of personality factors of college students who were addicted and non-addicted to Internet. The study was also able to find the difference of Internet addiction in regard to gender, family structure (nuclear and joint family) and place of residence (rural and urban).

Personality traits
Big five personality theory developed by Paul T Costa & Robert R McCrae was used in the present study. This theory explains five traits which are named as neuroticism, extraversion, openness to new experiences, conscientiousness and agreeableness. NEO (Neuroticism, Extraversion & Openness to experience) Inventories were developed on the basis of the fivefactor model of personality and these inventories are widely used to assess the personality factors. In NEO Inventories, factors are developed by groups of inter-correlated traits (McCrae & Costa, 1997).
The first personality trait under the big five personality theory is neuroticism which denotes the emotional stability of a person. A person who scores high on neuroticism would tend to be emotionally unstable and may experience negative affect such as sadness, fear and anger in a more frequent manner. Whereas individuals who score low on this trait may act calm and relaxed (Carver & Connor Smith, 2010;McCrae & Costa, 1997). The second personality trait, extraversion, refers to the social engagement and energy level of an individual (Soto, 2018). Extraverts are highly sociable and they like excitement and stimulation from the external world. They tend to be active, assertive and optimistic (McCrae & Costa, 1987). Openness to experience, the third personality factor, is characterized by imagination, intellectual curiosity and originality in thinking (John & Srivastava, 1999). High scorers in this dimension would be untraditional, creative and open-minded; on the other hand, low scorers are more conventional and prefer familiar routines (Johnson & Ostendorf, 1993).
Another personality trait, conscientiousness, refers to being planned, cautious, goal-oriented and decisive (Costa & McCrae, 1992). Highly conscientiousness individuals prefer to be structured and committed to their duties and responsibilities (Soto, 2018). In contrast, less conscientious individuals would be disorganized, lazy and negligent, and they are found to form dependence on Internet (Rahmani & Lavasani, 2011;Samarein et al., 2013). Finally, agreeableness was described in terms of trust, compassion and altruism. High scorers in this personality trait would be prosocial, considerate about others, and express concern for others' well-being (Zaidi et al, 2013;John & Srivastava, 1999). On the other hand, a low score would be characterized by being egocentric and competitive than cooperative.

Internet addiction
Internet undoubtedly facilitates our daily life in a beneficial way. But the extreme and unnecessary use of Internet can develop behaviour patterns that are addictive in nature. Internet addiction can be considered as an impulse control disorder or obsessive-compulsive disorder that has similarity with pathological gambling. People may use Internet for various purposes such as browsing, texting, social networking, gaming and so on (Hussain & Pontes, 2019). Under certain conditions, some may develop an attachment to their online friends, sometimes getting over involved in social media and games. Thus, both DSM 5 by American Psychiatric Association & American Psychiatric Association (2013) and ICD 11 by World Health Organization (2019) which are the classification system used for identifying and diagnosing disorders had included a new diagnosis as Internet gaming disorder, which is very similar to Internet addiction. Kandell (1998) defined Internet addiction as "a psychological dependence on internet, irrespective of the kind of activity done." A more elaborative definition was given by Weinstein and Lejoyeux (2010) that "excessive preoccupations, urges or behaviours regarding computer use and internet access that result in distress." The concept of Internet addiction was initially proposed by Ivan Goldberg in 1995(Goldberg, 1996. During the same time, several studies conducted in this area, yet Kimberly Young who is an expert in the area of internet addiction elaborately studied Internet addiction and identified six components (K. Young, 2017). Internet addiction is also called as problematic Internet use (Diana & Xavier, 2014;Mazhari, 2012), pathological Internet use (Fuchs et al., 2018;Morahan-Martin & Schumacher, 2000), compulsive Internet use (Quiñones-García & Korak-Kakabadse, 2014) and so on. Internet addiction affects different areas of human life and consequently leads to low self-efficacy (Berte et al., 2019), poor quality of life (Tran et al., 2017), at times even anxiety and depression (Lebni et al., 2020;Lim & Nam, 2020).
Kimberly Young (1999), who studied Internet addiction extensively, categorized it in different types such as cyber-sexual addiction which involves excessive or addictive use of adult websites and pornography; cyber relationship addiction characterized by the preoccupation with online relationships than real-life connections; net compulsions include online gambling and irresistible online purchasing or shopping; information overload, the uncontrollable urge to search for information; and computer addiction which involves computer game (online or offline) playing (Hoeg, 2021;Saini et al., 2016).
Kimberly K. Young (2017) also identified six components of internet addiction, namely, salience, excessive use, neglect work, anticipation, lack of control and neglect social life. Salience refers to an individual's preoccupation with the Internet which may even involve hiding online activities from others. It also includes over-dependence on Internet and considers life as boring or dispirited without Internet. Excessive use indicates the tendency to be online for a long period of time and may become restless, if not allowed to use internet for a while. Neglect Work denotes the predisposition to ignore the job or academic works because of online activities. Anticipation refers to the likelihood of thinking about online activities when the person is not using Internet or computer. Squandering time more than intended and the failure to regulate time spend online explains the lack of control. Finally, neglect of social life indicates that online relationships are used to deal with real-life problems. It denotes the tendency to make new online connections that may not present in the real life.
Not everyone using Internet develops addictive behaviour, whereas some are finding difficulty in controlling their urge to use Internet. This shows that the individual characteristics or personality traits could be one of the factors that determines Internet addiction. The current study tried to evaluate the influence of various personality traits on Internet addiction. Nevertheless, contradictory findings were found out in the existing literature. For example, though some studies showed a negative correlation between extraversion and Internet addiction (Samarein et al., 2013;Servidio, 2014), some other studies could not find any significant relationship between both (Diana & Xavier, 2014;Sum & Hamsan, 2016). Similarly, both positive correlations (Ahlan & Balogun, 2013;Celik et al., 2012) as well as negative relationship (Ozturk et al., 2015) were identified between openness to experience and Internet addiction. On the other hand, Randler et al. (2014) and Servidio (2014) could not find any significant relationship between openness to experience and unhealthy Internet use. In short, these opposing findings also paves a way to the relevance of the current study in the present scenario. Hence, it can be seen that different types of personality traits play a role in the Internet usage. Therefore, following hypotheses were formulated for the present study by considering both the theoretical background and the findings obtained from the above-mentioned literature.
(1) Personality traits will have a significant influence on Internet addiction.
(2) There will be a significant difference in Internet addiction in regard to gender, family structure and place of residence.

Methods
Methods provide a formal outline of the present research which describes the structure and steps followed in the study. It includes the hypothesis, details of the sample group and size, measures or questionnaires used for data collection, procedures (including sampling method) followed, and statistical analysis used for the interpretation of results.

Participants
A sample of 421 college students from Kerala (a state in India) age ranging from 18 to 25 (mean = 20.09, SD = 1.04) were included in the present study. Out of this, 176 were males and 245 were females. 146 students were from the joint family, whereas 274 were from the nuclear family. Students from rural, urban and semi-urban areas constitute the sample with a number of 157, 107, and 157, respectively (refer to Table 1).
According to the norms, those who score below 30 on Internet addiction test had been considered as not addicted. Hence, 25.2% (n = 106) of participants were found as not addicted to Internet. Whereas the remaining 45.4% (n = 191), 29.0% (n = 122) and 0.5% (n = 2) of respondents were having mild, moderate, and severe addiction to Internet, respectively (refer to Table 2).

Measures
Two questionnaires were used in the present study-NEO FFI 3 & Internet Addiction Test (IAT) (1) NEO FFI-3 (NEO Five-Factor Inventory) which has 60 items was developed by Paul T Costa and Robert R McCrae. This inventory is designed to assess five basic personality traits such as Neuroticism, Extroversion, Openness to Experience, Agreeableness, and Conscientiousness. Each of these personality factors was assessed by 12 items. Internal consistency of the subscales is ranging from 0.68 to 0.86 (Costa & McCrae, 1992).
(2) Internet Addiction Test (IAT) was developed by Dr. Kimberly Young (1998). IAT includes 20 items measured in a five-point scale. The total score ranges from 0 to 100, where 0 to 30 point is considered as normal usage, 31 to 49 as mild, 50 to 79 as moderate and 80 to 100 as a severe level of Internet addiction. Cronbach's Alpha value, Spearman-Brown value, and Guttman split-half value for the test were 0.90, 0.86, and 0.85, respectively (Keser et al., 2013).

Procedure
The sample was drawn from Kerala, which is an Indian state. The sample was selected with a multi-stage random sampling method. Kottayam district in Kerala state was chosen for gathering the data. Then, seven under-graduation Arts and Science colleges were selected with the help of the website "Research Randomizer". After consulting the principal/concerned authority of each college, students from different batches were picked out randomly. Afterwards, two questionnaires were distributed among the participants, namely, the Revised NEO Personality Inventory and Young's Internet Addiction Test along with a sheet includes the details of the socio-demographic data of the subject. Data were collected from the students who were willing to participate in the research. Informed consent was taken from the participants and confidentiality was assured. A total of 430 samples were collected. But, nine samples were avoided from the final analysis due to omissions and consequently 421 data were used for the study.

Data analysis
Descriptive statistics of the socio-demographic variables and levels of Internet addiction were analyzed. Apart from these, independent samples t-test, Pearson product-moment correlation, ANOVA and multiple linear regression analysis were conducted. The whole analysis was carried out with the help of IBM SPSS Statistics-26 software.  Table 4 shows the correlation between personality traits and the components of Internet addiction. The personality traits such as neuroticism (r = 0.193), openness to experience (r = −0.116), agreeableness (r = −0.186) and conscientiousness (r = −0.269) were significantly correlated with Internet addiction. Furthermore, Neuroticism was positively correlated with salience (r = 0.174), excessive use (r = 0.163), neglect work (r = 0.202) and lack of control (r = 0.166). Extroversion was not significantly correlated with any areas of Internet addiction. Openness to experience was negatively correlated with excessive use (r = −0.130) and neglect work (r = −0.117). Agreeableness was found to have a significant negative correlation with all dimensions of Internet addiction, except lack of control. Conscientiousness was also found to have a negative correlation with all areas of Internet addiction.  Table 6 illustrates the t-test results of Internet addiction on the basis of gender. Table 6 shows that the p-value is less than 0.01 level. Hence, the results are significant, i.e., there is a significant difference in Internet addiction among males and females. Males (mean = 45.76, SD = 14.80) are found to have more addiction behaviour towards the usage of Internet than females (mean = 37.14, SD = 15.47). Table 7 shows the t-test results of internet addiction on the basis of family structure, namely, joint and nuclear family. From Table 7, it can be seen that the p-value is less than 0.01 level. Hence, the results are significant, i.e., a significant difference could find out among joint and nuclear family in regard to Internet addiction. Internet addiction was found more among participants from nuclear family (mean = 47.01, SD = 11.70) than joint family (mean = 29.07, SD = 15.73).   Table 8 denotes the ANOVA result of Internet addiction on the basis of the place of residence like rural, urban and semi-urban areas. But the result was found to be not significant as the p-value is greater than 0.05.

Discussion
The present study was majorly intended to find out the difference of various personality traits such as neuroticism, extraversion, openness to experience, agreeableness and conscientiousness among college students who are Internet addicted and non-addicted which was determined by the score in Internet Addiction Test (IAT). In the current study, those who scored above and below the score of 30 was considered as Internet addicted and non-addicted, respectively. Internet addiction which is also known as problematic or pathological Internet use is found as a challenging side of Internet usage. Today's generation tend to depend on Internet facilities for various purposes. From the collected sample, 75% of the participants were having either mild, moderate or severe addiction (Table 2). This is similar to the existing prevalence rate of Internet addiction from various studies conducted in different countries (Abdel-Salam et al., 2019;Gedam et al., 2017;Zenebe et al., 2021).

Personality traits of addicted and non-addicted students
The data obtained in the current study show that a significant difference exist between addicted and non-addicted college students on neuroticism, agreeableness and conscientiousness (Table 3). Comparing neuroticism of addicted and non-addicted students provides a clear indication that the former group have a higher level of neuroticism compared to the latter one. Neuroticism, which measures the emotional stability of the individual, was also found to be positively correlated with Internet addiction in the correlation analysis (Table 4). Shi and Du (2019), Sum and Hamsan (2016), and Wang et al. (2014) also found similar conclusion.
Students who belong to the addicted group have a lower level of agreeableness compared to the non-addicted participants (Table 3). Agreeableness, which is considered as an important element in interpersonal connections, characterized by empathy and altruism, was also found to be negatively correlated with Internet addiction (Table 4). Sahraian et al. (2016), Hajializadeh andSamavi (2015), and Randler et al. (2014) also reported a negative correlation between agreeableness and Internet addiction.
The level of conscientiousness is more for non-addicted participants, compared to the addicted group (Table 3). Besides a negative correlation was found out between conscientiousness and Internet addiction (Table 4). These results depict that individuals who are disorganized, impulsive and aimless have a higher chance to become addicted to Internet than people who are cautious, well-organized and self-disciplined (Kayis et al., 2016;Rahmani & Lavasani, 2011;Sum & Hamsan, 2016).
Although the present study could not find any significant difference among the students in the level of openness to experience and extraversion, Table 4 shows that openness to experience, which is characterized as being independent, untraditional and imaginative was found to be negatively correlated with Internet addiction. Similar findings were drawn by Ozturk et al. (2015), however in contrast, a positive correlation was found by Celik et al. (2012) and Ahlan and Balogun (2013).
The current study could neither find any significant difference of extraversion between addicted and non-addicted participants (Table 3) nor observe any significant relationship between extraversion and Internet addiction (Table 4). Although similar insignificant results were obtained by Sum and Hamsan (2016), Diana andXavier (2014), andBuckner et al. (2012), some other studies could find out a negative correlation between extraversion and Internet addiction (Hajializadeh & Samavi, 2015;Samarein et al., 2013;Servidio, 2014). Extrovert individuals may prefer face-to-face environment and so they may be using Internet daily as a medium to extend their personal relationships. However, introverts tend to use online facilities to maintain their social relations with less obvious face-to-face relationships (Hamburger & Ben-Artzi, 2000). In essence, studies explain that both introverts and extroverts are using Internet for various purposes. In summary, the above-mentioned findings show that the first hypothesis "there will be a significant correlation between personality traits and internet addiction" can't be rejected.

Relationship between personality traits and components of Internet addiction
Kimberly Young identified six components of Internet addiction and they were salience, excessive use, neglect work, anticipation, lack of control and neglect social life (K. Young, 2017). The relationship between various personality traits and these components of internet addiction has not been researched. Hence, the present study attempted to identify the relationship between the five personality factors and the six components of internet addiction.  Table 8, the p-value is greater than 0.05. Therefore, the result is not significant In the current study, neuroticism was found to have a significant positive correlation with salience, excessive use, neglect work, and lack of control (Table 4). This indicates that individuals with emotional instability would be preoccupied with Internet with an increased tendency to be online, even by neglecting his/her work or academic affairs. Besides this, openness to experience is significantly related to "excessive use" and "neglect work" in a negative direction. This shows that the people who are conventional and traditional are tend to use it excessively, even by ignoring their academic or job responsibilities.
Agreeableness was negatively correlated with all the components of Internet addiction, except lack of control (Table 4). This indicates that individuals with less empathy and compassion are more likely to be dependent on internet than people who have concern for others. Likewise, conscientiousness also found to have a significant negative correlation with all the dimensions of internet addiction, which means that organized or hard-working people are less prone to Internet addiction. In short, people with low level of agreeableness and conscientiousness would enjoy spending time online and they are characterized with increased anticipation to be online. They may neglect their academic or career responsibilities over Internet usage and tend to rely on online relationships to deal with their personal matters.

Effect of personality traits on internet addiction
The influence of personality factors on internet addiction was analyzed with the help of multiple linear regression (Table 5). Peris et al. (2020), Zamani et al. (2011), and Tan and Yang (2012) identified that neuroticism and extraversion can predict Internet addiction, whereas Souza et al.
(2018) ascertain that only neuroticism and conscientiousness can predict Internet addiction. Nevertheless, findings of the present study explain that except openness to experience, other personality traits such as neuroticism, extraversion, agreeableness and conscientiousness can predict Internet addiction (Table 5). Hence, the second hypothesis "personality traits have a significant influence on internet addiction" is retained with the help of the current findings.

Internet addiction and socio-demographic factors
The present study found that male participants were using Internet more than the female students (Table 6). Existing literature state that the disparity between both genders could be because that the female respondents have better communication skills compared to male students, or that male participants would use internet for face-to-face communication (Balta & Horzum, 2008;Choi, 2001;Liang et al., 2016;Serin et al., 2010). Tsai et al. (2009) also pointed out that the male gender may act as a risk factor for Internet addiction which may be because of the freedom that males have in our society than females. Free and increased accessibility of pornography on the web was also explained as a reason for the increased use of Internet by males.
The current study could find out a significant difference in internet addiction on the basis of family structure. Participants from nuclear family were identified as more prone for Internet addiction compared to joint family members (Table 7). During the last decade, the Indian family structure is drastically changing from the traditional joint family system to nuclear family units which primarily include only a couple and their children (Dhami, 2020;Terentia Consultants, 2017). Surprisingly, this change is not only occurring in urban areas but in rural parts too (Shaikh, 2017). Hence, the more usage of Internet among nuclear family could be due to the lesser number of members that result in the reduction of face-to-face interactions.
The obtained results show that there is no significant difference in Internet addiction with regard to the place of residence (Table 8). The recent report shows that in India the rural Internet users are becoming more (Mishra & Chanchani, 2020;Sekhose, 2020). A report by Jain and Sanghi (2016) pointed out that people from rural areas which constitute two-thirds of the country's population are going to be the bigger part of Internet usage for the rest of the decade. Considering these reports together, it can be assumed that there wouldn't be any significant difference in internet addiction in rural or urban areas. These findings clearly indicate that the third hypothesis "there will be a significant difference in internet addiction in regard to gender, family structure and place of residence" can be retained.

Conclusions
The current study was able to get significant results and found that neuroticism was more among Internet addicted population, whereas agreeableness and conscientiousness were more among the non-addicted population. Furthermore, different components of Internet addiction like salience, excessive use, neglect work, anticipation, lack of control and neglect of social life are related to various personality factors. Besides, a significant difference of Internet addiction could find among males and females as well as nuclear and joint family. Thus, it can be concluded that personality factors could predict the tendency to develop Internet addiction, and identifying the risky personality traits would be useful to engage in preventive measures of Internet addiction.

Limitations of the study
Although the study was able to draw significant results, a few limitations were there. Firstly, the data was collected only from one district. Secondly, the equal number of participants in different groups (eg. gender, family structure, and place of residence) could not be maintained in the study. Thirdly, the study could not screen the type of Internet usage. Although Internet usage is more among youth, other age groups can also be considered in future research.

Recommendations for further research
Drawing a boundary between the normal and problematic Internet usage is not easy. Especially, the relevance of Internet and related technology cannot be ignored and has been widely used in every aspect of our life. Therefore, differentiating Internet addiction from normal use of Internet would be the difficult process in the further research. Along with this, nowadays people from different age groups are using Internet. Hence, the future studies can collect the data from different age groups as well with an increased sample size. Also, personality traits which are vulnerable to develop addiction towards various platforms like social media, online games, shopping, and so on can be evaluated in the further research. On the other hand, as technology is becoming a part of our daily life, it is important to check the effectiveness of various intervention methods to prevent Internet addiction. Because, in future it is not possible to avoid using Internet. Along with these, different socio-demographic and cultural factors that leads to Internet addiction can also be assessed in the future studies.