The Impact of Technology on Adolescent Behavior

Abstract

Information and communication technologies have become the determining feature of our time, making obviously our lives different from what they were once ago. The Internet is without a doubt very popular among teenagers, but as radio, movies, television were initially treated suspiciously and are seen as "corruption” to the youth, also the internet is seen with skepticism for its negative impact on the youth. Adolescents have the highest level of Internet use compare to other groups. They are inclined to stay awake until late at night connected to the internet behind a screen, ignoring social interaction, homework, school, and the world in general. This kind of adolescent’s behavior has become the concern of parents but not only because their behavior is assuming the dimensions of an internet addiction towards technology. The aim of the study was to assess the effects of technology on adolescent’s behavior. This is a transversal study, which through quantitative methods of data collection describes and analyzes simultaneously. In this study have participated 810 adolescents (N=810) high school students belonging to 14 schools of the city of Tirana. There has been applied two -stages cluster sample and the formula used to calculate the sample size was standard. Results showed that adolescent’s internet use is not just a virtual environment or parallel but an integral part of their lives. Adolescences existing behavior is being redefined into the global reach of digital technologies and the growing concern of parents about the impact of technology on adolescent’s behavior is real. For example, it was demonstrated in all correlations between the time that adolescents stay in the Internet and the impact that it has on their behavior, which were conformed strongly in all values (chi square ranged from 300 to 550, and the p value was always 0.0000 ).

DOI: 10.5901/ajis.2015.v4n2s2p288