Internet addiction has become a serious behavioral health problem in Asia. However, there are no up-to-date country comparisons. The Asian Adolescent Risk Behavior Survey (AARBS) screens and compares the prevalence of Internet behaviors and addiction in adolescents in six Asian countries. A total of 5,366 adolescents aged 12-18 years were recruited from six Asian countries: China, Hong Kong, Ja...

The Internet started as a divine gift to the human society, it was meant to enlighten the human society by transferring knowledge, making available all the information needed for human well being, growth and prosperity. But as the Internet grew, it created its own set of problems—one of the key ones being Internet Addiction. According to Dr. Jerald J. Block, from the Center for Internet Addicti...

Internet addiction is ‘‘an individual’s inability to control their Internet use, which in turn leads to feelings of distress and functional impairment of daily activities” [Shapira, N., Lessig, M., Goldsmith, T., Szabo, S., Lazoritz, M., Gold, M. et al. (2003). Problematic Internet use: Proposed classification and diagnostic criteria. Depression and Anxiety, 17(4), 207–216]. Previous research i...

AIMS The aim of the present study was to compare psychiatric symptoms between adolescents with and without Internet addiction, as well as between analogs with and without substance use. METHODS A total of 3662 students (2328 male and 1334 female) were recruited for the study. Self-report scales were utilized to assess psychiatric symptoms, Internet addiction, and substance use. RESULTS It w...

There has been a rapidly growing public awareness of the potential adverse effects arising from excessive, maladaptive or addictive internet usage 1,2 (hereafter the term internet addiction is used), which is a condition also known by terms such as internet dependence, problematic internet use, compulsive internet use, internet abuse and pathological internet use. Indeed, this condition is curr...

The last decade has witnessed a large increase in research on the newly emerging mental health problem of Internet addiction. Rather than looking at Internet addiction per se, this study focused on particular activities on the Internet that might be potentially addictive and linked them to personality traits that might predispose individuals to Internet addiction. The aims of this study were (i...

This study determined if two different internet addiction assessments would identify the same individuals as addicted to the internet. A total of 224 undergraduate internet users were surveyed using a stratified sampling plan based on the proportional allocation technique to procure as diverse a sample as possible. The assessments used were Young’s Internet Addiction Test (IAT), Caplan’s Genera...

Background A considerable group of internet users consists of university users; however, despite internet benefits and capabilities, internet overuse is a threat to societies especially to young people and students. Objective The objective of this study was to determine the predictive role of information literacy in internet addiction among students of Iran University of Medical Sciences duri...