Problematic Internet use and emotional and behavioral problems in high school students from a public educational institution in the north of Lima

Abstract

The purpose of this research was to study the relationship between the problematic use of the Internet and emotional and behavioral problems in secondary school students from a Public Educational Institution in Lima Norte. The research had a non-experimental cross-sectional design, the sample consisted of 539 high school students. For data collection, the scale of problematic internet use in adolescents (EUPI-a) and the scale of emotional and behavioral problems (Youth Self Report) originally created by Achenbach and Rescorla and adapted to the Mexican population by Andrade-Palos, Betancourt-Ocampo and Vallejo-Casarín (2010), later adapted and validated to the Peruvian population by Barreto-Mori (2018) in San Juan de Lurigancho, Lima. The results showed that there is a significant correlation between problematic internet use and emotional and behavioral problems (rho = 0.200; p = 0.000). Likewise, a significant correlation was found between problematic internet use and the dimensions of emotional and behavioral problems (p = 0.000 <.05), with the exception of the dimension of self-inflicted injuries (p = 0.344> .05).