The Investigation of High School Students’ Internet Usage For Gaming With Respect to Demographic Characteristics

Abstract

The purpose of this research is to examine high school students' internet usage for game purposes in terms of various variables. The sample of the study consisted of 360 (176 girls, 184 boys) students selected by the convenient sampling method in the 2018-2019 academic year. The students who participated in the study were selected from 9th, 10th, and 11th grade students in four different types of schools. In this study, the Personal Information Form developed by the researcher, the "Internet Addiction Scale (IAS)" produced by Young (1998) to measure students‟ internet addiction levels, and "Perceived Social Support Scale (PSSS)" revised (PSSS-R) by Yildirim (2004) to evaluate their perceptions of social support were used as data collection tools. Research data were analyzed using Chi-square and t-test. The findings of the study revealed that high school students‟ internet use for gaming purposes showed a significant difference according to gender, academic success, and daily internet usage time. Besides, it was determined that students who do not use the internet for gaming purposes perceive more social support than their friends who use the internet for gaming purposes.