Loneliness, Social Support, Life Satisfaction, and Internet Addiction among Day Scholars and Hostel Students

For the purpose of pursuing education, students stay in hostel to carry out their desired course. During hostel life, they gain experience and learn various things from their teachers and inmates. In addition, as they are staying away from their family, they go through certain enduring experiences like loneliness, lack of social support, and other issues. The present study examined the relationship between loneliness, social support internet addiction, and life satisfaction among day scholars and hostel students. The sample consisted of 200 college students out of which 100 were day scholars and 100 were hostel students. The students were selected from 3 colleges in Chennai city. The students were administered Internet Addiction Test (IAT) by Dr. Kimberly Young (1996), UCLA Loneliness Scale by Russell, D. (1978), Social Support Questionnaire by Sarason et al., (1987) and Life Satisfaction by Diener, E., Emmons, R. A., Larsen, R. J., & Griffin, S. (1985). Pearson correlation coefficient was used to investigate the relationship between internet addiction, loneliness, social support and life satisfaction. Independent samples t-test was used to examine the difference between day scholars and hostel students. The analysis revealed that internet addiction and loneliness were significantly positively correlated. There was no significant relationship between internet addiction and social support. Internet addiction and life satisfaction were found to be significantly negatively correlated. Loneliness and social support were found to be significantly negatively correlated. Loneliness and life satisfaction were found to be significantly negatively correlated. There was a significant positive correlation between social support and life satisfaction. Also, results indicated that there were no significant differences in internet addiction and life satisfaction among day scholars and hostel students. There were significant differences in loneliness and social support among day scholars and hostel students. Hostel students tended to have higher loneliness and experience lesser social support.