Internet Usage and Academic Achievement of Adolescents of West Bengal: An Exploratory Study

Abstract

Present study is a process to find out the effect of internet usage on the academic achievement of adolescents of West Bengal, specifically on the students of Higher Secondary level under the West Bengal Council of Higher Secondary Education. To study the impact thoroughly the investigator divided internet usage into three categories- Educational usage, Communicational usage and Recreational usage. Intending to fetch out the relationship of different types of internet usage with students’ academic achievement as well as the gender difference regarding the internet usage, the researcher formulated some null hypotheses. To go through this study the investigator administered an internet usage questionnaire on 138 class XI students, selected by purposive sampling method from different schools under WBCHSE. Percentage of marks obtained by the adolescents in Madhyamik examination was treated as the academic achievement by them. The investigator used Pearson’s Product Moment Correlation Coefficient and Independent Sample‘t’ test for testing the hypotheses. By the end of the study it was seen that Educational usage and Communicational usage of internet had no effect on their academic achievements, but there was negative effect of Recreational internet usage on their academic achievement. Also, boys and girls differed significantly in respect to their different internet usage.