Manifesto for a European research network into Problematic Usage of the Internet

Abstract

The Internet is now all-pervasive across much of the globe. While it has positive uses (e.g. prompt access to information, rapid news dissemination), many individuals develop Problematic Use of the Internet (PUI), an umbrella term incorporating a range of repetitive impairing behaviours. The Internet can act as a conduit for, and may contribute to, functionally impairing behaviours including excessive and compulsive video gaming, compulsive sexual behaviour, buying, gambling, streaming or social networks use. There is growing public and National health authority concern about the health and societal costs of PUI across the lifespan. Gaming Disorder is being considered for inclusion as a mental disorder in diagnostic classification systems, and was listed in the ICD-11 version released for consideration by Member States ( http://www.who.int/classifications/icd/revision/timeline/en/ ). More research is needed into disorder definitions, validation of clinical tools, prevalence, clinical parameters, brain-based biology, socio-health-economic impact, and empirically validated intervention and policy approaches. Potential cultural differences in the magnitudes and natures of types and patterns of PUI need to be better understood, to inform optimal health policy and service development. To this end, the EU under Horizon 2020 has launched a new four-year European Cooperation in Science and Technology (COST) Action Programme (CA 16207), bringing together scientists and clinicians from across the fields of impulsive, compulsive, and addictive disorders, to advance networked interdisciplinary research into PUI across Europe and beyond, ultimately seeking to inform regulatory policies and clinical practice. This paper describes nine critical and achievable research priorities identified by the Network, needed in order to advance understanding of PUI, with a view towards identifying vulnerable individuals for early intervention. The network shall enable collaborative research networks, shared multinational databases, multicentre studies and joint publications .

Concept, Possibilities and Pilot-Testing of a New Smartphone Application for the Social and Life Sciences to Study Human Behavior Including Validation Data from Personality Psychology

“…This approach probably will allow for gathering and analyzing large datasets in order to provide, not only standard statistics on people's smartphone behavior, which can be associated with all kinds of psycho-social assessments, but to also examine individual trajectories, examining prototypic usage patterns, and develop prediction models on for example, an individual's mental health course based on Insights' passive mobile sensing. Analyzing individuals' behavior on smartphones has immense potential for several research areas and also for clinical practice, given that, for example, digital phenotyping has been considered a key future research area in the field of understanding excessive and uncontrolled or problematic usage of the Internet [40,41]. Please note that other similar platforms have been designed, e.g., to foster responsible gaming [42] and/or use mobile sensing in the social sciences [43,44].…”

Skills in the area of digital safety as a key component of digital literacy among teachers

“…In the context of digital safety, DL is seen in the light of praxeology (Kern and Bean 2018). This is due to the fact that school teachers carry out preventive activities which are designed to minimise risk behaviours mediated by digital media and most often connected with: student cyberbullying (Pyżalski 2012;Del Rey et al 2015) and cyberbullying aimed towards teachers (Kopecký and Szotkowski 2017); the problematic use of the Internet (Fineberg et al 2018); understanding the mechanisms of online abuse (Walotek-Ściańska et al 2014); image protection (Szpunar 2017); the infringement of intellectual property law (Tomczyk 2018); and numerous other e-threats. All the above-listed problems are in a state of constant evolution along with both the changing scale of existing and the appearance of new risk behaviours (Livingstone 2018;Livingstone et al 2017).…”

Problematic internet use: Media portrayal across eight countries

“…They are reflected in the information computerization processes as the most important highlight, and the Internet along with the modern media as its most prominent hallmarks. The usage of the Internet at present is so pervasive and prevalent, that the emergence of certain problematic behaviours has given urgency to a growing global concern, as expressed by major health agencies (World Health Organization [WHO], 2019), research collaborative networks (Byrne, Albright, & Kardefelt-Winther, 2016;Fineberg et al, 2018;Király et al, 2017), and governmental bodies (Best, 2017). In fact, problematic internet use (PIU) has an estimated prevalence ranging from 1% to 27% among people worldwide (Kuss, Griffiths, Karila, & Billieux, 2014) with an increased risk for children and youth (El Asam, Samara, & Terry, 2019;Gansner et al, 2019;Symons, Vanwesenbeeck, Walrave, Van Ouytsel, & Ponnet, 2019).…”

“…Specific behaviours, such as the Gaming Disorder characterised as a pattern of persistent or recurrent gaming behaviour (digital gaming or video-gaming), which may be conducted online (i.e., over the internet) or offline, has already been recognized as problematic and included in the latest revision of the International Classification of Diseases (ICD-11;WHO, 2019). However, PIU comprises a diverse group of complex behaviours, ranging from excessive gambling, online shopping, cybersex and prolonged viewing of pornographic content, to exceedingly frequent email checking, social media use, and cyberbullying (Anderson, Steen, & Stavropoulos, 2017;Fineberg et al, 2018), all of which can cause significant impairment of everyday functioning among some individuals. In fact, the group encompasses many behaviours that share common features with some psychological problems or psychiatric disorders (like social anxieties and phobias, impulse control problems and attention deficit/hyperactivity disorders), thus inevitably catching the attention of the relevant experts in finding ways to assess the problem.…”

“…When it comes to PIU, an additional risk for over-/under-representation of the subject, stems from the current lack of scientific consensus on many important issues such as the lack of agreement on the universally accepted definition of PIU as a 'mental disorder', the critical scarcity of reliable information on its prevalence, clinical parameters, brain-based biology and socio-health-economic impact. Moreover, significant geographical differences regarding the magnitude of the problem (e.g., East Asia versus Europe) still need to be better understood (Fineberg et al, 2018). Therefore, understanding the role of the media, its consciousness and cautiousness about the problem, and its overall approach towards the portrayal of PIU, bears great importance not only in raising public awareness, but also for informing governmental strategies and guiding their policies in the field (Gavin, 2018).…”