The Relationship between Media Usage and Positive Youth Development with the Mediate Effects of Internet Use Gratification

Internet offers countless opportunities that affect students' lives and their career potentials. With the help of Internet, youth development processes are positively encouraged. In order to understand how Internet can influence Positive Youth Development (PYD), this study was carried out with an attempt to identify the relationship between problems of using Internet, income, and PYD with the mediate effects of Internet use gratification among Malaysian youth. A quantitative survey method was used to collect data from 440 students (142 male and 298 female) majoring in science and social science from University Putra Malaysia using stratified random sampling. The results show that there is a mediate effect for Internet use gratification with problems of using Internet and five dimensions of PYD; however, this relationship is not significant for the role of income. In addition, no significant difference was found between science and social science groups. The relationship between Internet use gratification and 5Cs (connection, competence, character, caring, confidence) proved to be significant. There is no statistically meaningful relationship between participants' income and 5Cs except for confidence. There is no significant relationship between income and Internet use gratification. There is also no significant relationship between problem of using Internet and the (5Cs); however, this relationship proved to be significant with Internet use gratification. Implications of the study are also discussed.