The use of the internet, and in particular web browsing, offers many potential advantages for educational institutions as students have access to a wide range of information previously not available. However, there are potential negative effects due to factors such as time-wasting and asocial behaviour. In this study, we conducted an empirical investigation of the academic performance and the web-usage pattern of 2153 undergraduate students. Data from university proxy logs allows us to examine usage patterns and we compared this data to the students' academic performance. The results show that there is a small but significant (both statistically and educationally) association between heavier web browsing and poorer academic results (lower average mark, higher failure rates). In addition, among good students, the proportion of students who are relatively light users of the internet is significantly greater than would be expected by chance.
* Academic performance present the early findings of how internet use affects collegiate academic performance. This study focuses on students' dependence on the internet and attempts to quantify to what extent students are addicted to the internet. It was found that a significant percentage of students whose academic performance was bad indicated that the internet kept them up late at night, thereby making them tired for lectures the following day @cite_2 . Strong evidence was found to suggest that students' excessive use of the internet is associated with academic problems, however it was unclear if these students would have had similar problems even without the internet being so readily available. These findings demonstrate the need for more research into this field, and specifically the need for hard data to be analysed, and compared to the self-reported data available from other surveys.
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Recent research at colleges and universities has suggested that some college students’ academic performance might be impaired by heavier use of the Internet. This study reviews the relevant literature and presents data from a survey of 572 students at a large public university. Heavier recreational Internet use was shown to be correlated highly with impaired academic performance. Loneliness, staying up late, tiredness, and missing class were also intercorrelated with self-reports of Internet-caused impairment. Self-reported Internet dependency and impaired academic performance were both associated with greater use of all Internet applications, but particularly with much greater use of synchronous communication applications such as chat rooms and MUDs, as opposed to asynchronous applications such as email and Usenet newsgroups.