Prevalence, correlates, psychiatric comorbidities, and suicidality in a community population with problematic Internet use

Associations between problematic Internet use and psychiatric symptoms among university students in Japan

“…Regarding psychiatric symptoms, our survey results were not much different from the survey results of other countries. In the previous studies, depressive state, anxiety, insomnia, and ADHD were found to be related to PIU . In our population as well, PIU was associated with such disease symptoms.…”

“…Fifth, the IAT was developed about two decades ago under conditions where Internet access was limited, and therefore the cut‐off values of IAT 40 might be inappropriate to define ‘problematic’ Internet use now. As the IAT includes questions regarding dysfunctionality associated with Internet use (such as ‘How often do your job performance or productivity suffer because of the internet?’), we considered IAT to still be usable today, in addition to the fact that many studies to date have used the scale . However, we believe that the invention of a new scale to better fit modern Internet use is required in the near future.…”

“…You may surf the Web a bit too long at times, but you have control over your usage.’). In this study, we defined subjects with an IAT ≥ 40 as the PIU group and those with an IAT ≤ 39 as the non‐PIU group, as similarly defined in some previous studies …”

“…Some reports have also investigated the relation between PIU and psychiatric diseases. PIU is reported to be connected to attention‐deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), depression, anxiety, obsessive–compulsive disorder, personality disorder, ASD traits, sleep disorders, and long‐time use of the Internet each day . A review article by Carli et al .…”

“…21 Some reports have also investigated the relation between PIU and psychiatric diseases. PIU is reported to be connected to attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), 22 depression, 23,24 anxiety, 25 obsessive-compulsive disorder, 26 personality disorder, 27 ASD traits, 28 sleep disorders, 16,29 and longtime use of the Internet each day. 30 A review article by Carli et al 31 on 20 separate studies reported that 75% of those studies found significant associations between PIU and depression, 57% connected PIU and anxiety disorders, 100% connected PIU and ADHD tendencies, and 66% connected PIU and hostility and aggression.…”