Commentary: Development and Validation of a Self-reported Questionnaire for Measuring Internet Search Dependence

Despite being a controversial topic, research into a wide variety of online addictions has grown substantially over the last decade (1, 2). My own research into online addictions has been wide ranging and has included online social networking [e.g., Ref. (3)], online sex addiction (4), online gaming addiction [e.g., Ref. (5)], online shopping addiction (6), and online gambling addiction [e.g., Ref. (7)]. As early as the late 1990s/early 2000s, I constantly argued that when it came to online addictions, most of those displaying problematic behavior had addictions on the Internet rather than addictions to it (i.e., they were not addicted to the medium of the Internet but addicted to applications and activities that could be engaged in via the Internet) (8–11). A recent paper by Wang et al. (12) described the development of the Questionnaire of Internet Search Dependence (QISD), a tool developed to assess individuals who may be displaying a dependence on using online search engines (such as Google and Baidu). The notion of individuals being addicted to using search engines is not new and was one of five types of Internet addiction outlined by Young (13) in her typology (and what she termed “information overload” and referred to compulsive database searching). Although I criticized the typology on the grounds that most of the types of online addict were not actually Internet addicts but were individuals using the medium of the Internet to fuel other addictive behaviors (e.g., gambling, gaming, day trading, etc.), I did implicitly acknowledge that activities such as Internet database searching could theoretically exist, even if I did not think it was a type of Internet addiction. As far as I am aware, the new scale developed by Wang et al. (12) is the first to create and to psychometrically evaluate an instrument to assess “Internet search dependence.” As noted by the authors: