PENGARUH KESEPIAN TERHADAP PROBLEMATIC INTERNET USE PADA SISWA SEKOLAH

Adolescence is a golden age for teenagers to realize their potential. Loneliness is an increasingly common phenomenon experienced by school students in the current digital era, especially in terms of emotional connectedness and the quality of meaningful social relationships. In the midst of these conditions, excessive internet use or problematic internet use (PIU) appears as an adaptive coping mechanism, characterized by excessive dependence on online activities and negative impacts on academic and social functions. The purpose of this study was to see whether loneliness affects problematic internet use (PIU) in school students. The approach used was quantitative correlation with a simple linear regression approach involving 202 junior high school/high school students. The data collection method used purposive sampling through an online questionnaire. The measuring instruments used included the Problematic Internet Use Questionnaire (PIUQ) to measure PIU and the UCLA Loneliness Scale Version 3 to measure the level of loneliness. The results of the analysis showed that there was a significant influence between loneliness and problematic internet use (PIU) (β = 0.55) with a coefficient of determination R2 of 0.310, which means that loneliness contributed 31% to the increase in PIU. These findings suggest that the hypothesis is acceptable whereby school students who experience higher levels of loneliness are more likely to exhibit problematic internet use behavior.