Abstract

• The main purpose of this study was to investigate problematic internet use and psychological well-being of pre-service teachers from selected Education Colleges. A total of 600 pre-service teachers (300 males and 300 females) were selected from three Education Colleges by using stratified random sampling technique in this study. Problematic internet use was measured by questionnaire of Demetrovics, Szeredl and Rozsa (2008) and Cronbach’s alpha was 0.741. Psychological well-being was measured by using the questionnaire of Carol D. Ryff (1989) and Cronbach’s alpha was 0.843. Both questionnaires were answered on four-point Likert scale. According to the results, there were no significant differences in problematic internet use by gender and by grade. In psychological well-being, there was significant difference by gender at 0.01 level but no significant difference by grade. The female pre-service teachers feel more psychological well-being than male pre-service teachers. There were significant differences in both problematic internet use and psychological well-being of pre-service teachers by Education College. Education College 3 may have the most problems in using internet among Education Colleges and Education College 1 may feel the best psychological well-being among Education Colleges. It was found that problematic internet use and psychological well-being of pre-service teachers in this study were significantly and negatively correlated. 5% of variance in psychological well-being was predicted by problematic internet use of pre-service teachers. This may be expected to aid Education Colleges in understanding the degree of psychological well-being to which their pre-service teachers feel and how to reduce pre-service teachers’ problematic internet use.