The relationship between psychological well-being level and virtual environment loneliness level in health workers

Abstract

Objective: The use of the Internet/social media, which has become increasingly popular in our daily life, has brought new dimensions to interpersonal communication and relations. The aim of the study was to investigate whether there is a relationship between psychological well-being and loneliness levels in health workers and to determine the effects of demographic variables.

Methods: The sample of this descriptive study consisted of a total of 325 health workers. The research data were collected with a questionnaire including Personal Information Form, Multidimensional Psychological Well-Being Scale (MPPS) and Virtual Environment Loneliness Scale (VELS). Descriptive statistics, Spearman Corelation, Mann-Whitney U and Kruskall-Wallis H test were used for statistical analysis. The statistical significance level was accepted as p˂0.05.

Results: The mean age of participants was 30.47±3.28, 80% of them were women, 62.8% were married, 54.2% were nurses and 65.5% were undergraduate/graduate. The mean scores of the participants from the MPPS and VELS were 3.39±0.36 and 3.19±0.53, respectively. In this study, Psychological Well-Being scores were found significantly low in the group who work five years or less than five years, research assistants, having low income perception, found themselves unsuccessful in their careers and spend 1-3 hours on daily social media/internet (p<0.05). It has determined that these variables also make a significant difference in virtual environment loneliness. The relationship between loneliness and psychological well-being was examined by Spearman Correlation analysis and there was a statistically significant negative correlation between them (r = -0,27; p <0,05).

Conclusion: It was found that having the idea that life is meaningful is the most powerful determinant of psychological well-being. As individuals’ psychological well-being increases, their virtual loneliness and sharing decreases.