Published Paper Details:

The Internet is universal and pervasive in everyone's lives. For a medium that has fundamentally altered how individuals live their lives, its impact on the individual's psychology has been overlooked. The study helped shed light on the impact of psychosocial intervention on Problematic Internet Usage (PIU) among emerging adults from India and to assess its impact on Psychological Distress (PD) and Quality of Life (QoL). The intervention focused on areas including Systematic Desensitization, Mindfulness, CBT Techniques and aspects of Positive Psychology. Data was collected from a total sample of 168 emerging adults (43.5% male, 51.8% females and 4.8% of the participants preferred not to disclose their gender) through an online survey where Problematic Internet Usage Questionnaire by Demetrovics, Z. et al., Kessler Psychological Distress Scale and Quality of Life scale by B L Dubey et al. were used. Convenient sampling method was used to select participants for the intervention group (N=27). An independent sample t test was carried to understand the gender differences, results indicate the absence of the influence of gender in all three variables. Pearson correlation coefficient was used to analyze the relationship between variables. The results denote a significant correlation between PIU and PD and a significant negative correlation between PD and QoL. The results of paired sample t test denote that there's a significant difference in the pre-test and post-test of PIU and QOL. The study contributes to the understanding of how digitization has impacted one's life and mental health and offers suggestions on how to take a different perspective on problematic internet use in the future.