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Top1. Introduction And Background
The internet started in USA in the 1950s. Initially the purpose of internet is for military defense. Former US President Dwight D. Eisenhower formed the Advanced Research Projects Agency (ARPA) in 1958 and led to the formation of the ARPANET (Advanced Research Projects Agency Network). The aim of the ARPANET was to help American military technology stay ahead of its enemies (Science+Media Museum, 2020). Since then, internet quickly grew and become a global interconnected network of networks, or ‘Internet’. Internet became a mechanism for information dissemination, and a medium for collaboration and interaction between individuals regardless of geographic location (Internet Society, 2017). As of January 2022, there were 4.95 billion internet users worldwide - 62.5 percent of the global population. Of this total, 4.62 billion were social media users (Johnson, 2022). On average, internet user spends 6 hours and 42 minutes online each day (Zuckerman, 2020).
Even before the Covid-19 pandemic, internet activities and technologies are increasing rapidly. It has been our source of countless opportunities for personal fulfilment, professional development and value creation. It has become a vital necessity for working, learning, accessing basic services and keeping in touch. When Covid-19 hit the world, Internet has become more vital necessity for working, learning, accessing basic services and keeping in touch.
Internet use is near-ubiquitous among teens and young adults. In the last decade, the young adult internet population has remained the most likely to go online. According to Pew Research Center (2020), over the past ten years, teens and young adults have been consistently the two groups most likely to go online. In 2019, 4.1 billion people were using the Internet. Since then, the number of users has surged by 782 million to reach 4.9 billion people in 2021, or 63 per cent of the population.
On December 31, 2019, as a typical black swan event, Covid-19 took the world by complete surprise. This newly identified coronavirus was first seen in Wuhan, the capital of Central China’s Hubei province (Kilpatrick & Barter, 2021). Due to the threat of the Covid-19, many educational institutions worldwide suspended their academic activities and classes. Saudi Arabia suspended the in-attendance education activities in all schools, universities and educational institutions since March 9, 2020 and directed all educational institutions to implement distance learning through online platforms (Khalid, 2020). During the Covid-19 lockdown, the risk of internet addiction increased due to the dependence on the internet to perform daily activities and as an outlet for mental pressures (Siste et al., 2020). Jubail University College, the setting of the study, complied with the directive to shift the face-to-face classes to online learning. In 2020, the first year of the Covid-19 pandemic, the number of Internet users grew by 10.2 per cent, the largest increase in a decade (ITU, 2021). According to several studies, there is a higher prevalence of Internet usage during Covid-19 pandemic (Li et. al, 2021; Besalti & Satici, 2022, Siste et. al. 2021). Excessive Internet usage could have several impacts on mental health, such as greater severity of depression (Seki, Hamazaki, Natori, & Inadera, 2019) and anxiety (Soulioti, Stavropoulos, Christidi, Papastefanou, & Roussos, 2018).