Study of pathological Internet use, behavior and attitudes among students population at Technical Faculty Bor, University of Belgrade

“Pathological Internet use” (PIU) has been defined as Internet use which causes a specified number of symptoms, including mood-altering use of the Internet, failure to fulfill major role obligations, guilt, and craving. The current study deals with PIU in order to describe disturbed patterns of Internet use, behavior and attitudes among students population of the Technical Faculty in Bor, University of Belgrade. It surveyed students - Internet users, a population which is considered to be a high risk for pathological Internet use. It was obtained that 6% of the total number of respondents reported no symptoms, 46.4% of respondents reported limited symptoms of addiction, while 47.6% of respondents reported pathological symptoms. Factor analysis was applied to identify main constructs of Internet behavior and attitudes scale used in the present study. Further, the differences in Internet behavior and attitudes between the genders were studied using Mann-Whitney U test, while Kruskal-Wallis H test was applied to study differences between three groups of students with different degree of pathological Internet use. Obtained results reveal that the strongest differences between pathological users and others students exist in respect to the relationship and personality issues.