College Students Begin to Shake Internet Addiction

According to the conclusions of a new scientific study, it would appear that the rate of Internet addiction in the college student population is declining. The results discovered lower levels of addiction than had been found by other researches.

At this point, Internet addiction is not considered to be an actual medical condition, with experts still debating whether it meets the necessary requirements to be classified as such. However, numerous research teams have spent a lot of time investigating the disorder over the past few years.

The Internet Addiction Test (IAT) was developed as a response to these studies. Though not a well-validated psychological instrument, it is used by experts who want to get a measure of how much a person is oriented towards using the Internet.

The new pilot study was oriented towards college students because they are the most likely to spend many hours online daily. This population is also at a known risk of falling into other behavioral addictions as well, PsychCentral reports.

On some 224 students from two universities in the United States, Seattle Children’s Research Institute (SCRI) scientists and lead study researcher Dimitri A. Christakis, MD, applied the IAT test, in addition to the standard Patient Health Questionnaire.

About four percent of study participants were found to rank as being occasional or permanently addicted to the Internet. This figure is considerably smaller than the number of people other studies identified as at-risk of falling into this addition.

Previous works had suggested that as much as 6 to 10 percent of the population might be at risk. This leaves only two possibilities – either the past studies were incorrect in their methods, or the rate of Internet addiction is indeed decreasing,.

Interestingly, the team was also able to found a correlation between moderate to severe symptoms of depression and “problematic” Internet usage patterns. Christakis says that this correlation might warrant further investigations by other scientists as well.

“Pediatricians and parents continue to report overuse of the Internet in their patients and children, respectively,” the expert writes in the new study, which is entitled “Problematic Internet Usage in U.S. College Students: A Pilot Study.”

“Given the Internet is woven into the fabric of the lives of this generation of children, concerns about the potential for addiction are warranted and today’s college students are clearly at risk, given the considerable exposure that they have to the Internet,” he adds.

Details of the work have already been published online in the latest issue of the journal BMC Medicine.