Social anxiety, internet Usage, and depression among undergraduate students at Makerere University Post-COVID Pandemic

Abstract

There has been an increase in the prevalence of depression since the COVID-19 pandemic, and the cause of this change was one of the focus areas of this study. This study aimed to investigate the relationship between social anxiety, internet usage, and depression among undergraduate students at Makerere University post-COVID pandemic. The study was quantitative involving a sample of 379 undergraduate students from all the 10 colleges within the university, of which 173 females and the rest were males. A cross-sectional study was adopted, data was entered and analyzed using SPSS particularly linear regression, which assessed the relationship between the first three objectives, and process macro was used to determine the fourth objective. The results indicated the high prevalence of each variable, social anxiety disorder at 94.2%, Internet addiction at 78.6%, and depression at 55.4%. The study results also indicated that social anxiety predicted internet usage and depression, internet usage predicted depression. There was a mediating factor of internet usage between social anxiety and depression but no moderating effect of internet usage between social anxiety and depression. Based on the findings, the high prevalence of mental health problems demands urgent and effective measures to be taken to treat the affected students.