The effectiveness of school-based Sahaja Yoga Meditation in dealing with problematic Internet use among adolescents in India

In the era of globalisation, evolving technologies have become integral to modern life. With the normalisation of unrestricted internet access, many young people face negative impacts from excessive use, often affecting their self-esteem. Developing adaptive coping strategies may help mitigate these effects. This study examines the effectiveness of the Sahaja Yoga Meditation (SYM) program for improving self-esteem and adaptive coping that may reduce problematic internet use and maladaptive coping. This study included 119 students from 9th to 11th grades, from a government school in northern India. The study follows a quasi-experimental research design with a pre-post-test with a waitlist control group. The experimental group underwent a 12-week Sahaja Yoga Meditation (SYM) program; each week had 5 sessions of 40 minutes. The experimental group(n=56) included 26 boys and 30 girls with an average age of 13 (SD=1.46). The waitlist control group (n=63) included 30 boys and 33 girls with an average age of 13.67(SD=1.92). The experimental group demonstrated statistically significant improvements in self-esteem and adaptive coping, and reductions in problematic internet use and maladaptive coping, with large within-group effect sizes. These findings provide robust evidence for the efficacy of the SYM intervention, with clear interaction effects indicating differential gains over the waitlist control group. The results emphasise the potential of SYM as a scalable intervention to promote self-esteem, adaptive coping strategies and reduce (Problematic Internet Use (PIU) and risk behaviours among adolescents.