A Self-Assessment Tool for Measuring Internet Anxiety

When American poet and dramatist W.H. Auden said the above line during the Great Depression, he must have been feeling great fear and worry about his self-existence. Today, we live in an age when there is no escape from fear, stress, frustration, and anger. Undoubtedly, every human being suffers a great deal in one way or another. In our everyday life, we need a variety of information from various sources, which in our age include social networking Web sites, news, blogs, and wikis. In this present era, knowingly or unknowingly, we consume a lot of information from these sources. We try to create, read, and write using these popular tools. Most of the time, it is not easy for us to distinguish the good from the bad and the bad from the ugly. On one hand, we feel happy and alive when we are “connected” in this “age of the Internet.” On the other hand, we may be unaware of our own actions or behavior. S. Aydin suggests that the Internet in itself does not cause anxiety; rather, it is the users' participation “situation” that results in anxiety.