Malaysian Internet Surfing Addiction (MISA): Factors affecting the Internet use and its consequences

Abstract

Internet addiction provoked as a serious mental health issue in the recent decade. In the recent times, Internet addiction had become a global concern to the human society. As the electronic world has become more and more common to the young, younger generations are alleged to be susceptible to the risk of Internet addiction. This research outlines a method to examine the addictive level to the Malaysians Internet surfing. The purpose of our study is to identify the Internet use among Malaysians and the relation of excessive use to the addictive level. We propose and devise an online survey to study the Internet use among the younger generations. The questionnaire consists of five subsections; such as the relevant demographic questions, the diagnosis of the Internet addiction level, related questions on the Internet surfing behavior, the reasons of excessive Internet usage, and the consequences of the addictive behavior. Participants of the online survey were selected randomly from Malaysia, ranging from the age of 7-year old to the age of 30-year old. We found that the Internet use of the younger generations was susceptible to the Internet addiction. The findings reflect that younger generations are vulnerable to the fantasized world.