he field of internet addiction has experienced significant debates on conflicting epidemiology. This meta-analysis investigated the prevalence rates of generalized internet addiction (GIA) and internet gaming disorder (IGD).
We included 113 epidemiologic studies covering 693,306 subjects published from 1996 to 2018 (for 31 nations) that reported prevalence rates for GIA or IGD. We examined pooled prevalence of GIA and IGD and the hypothesized moderators including year, geographic regions, types of scales, and sample representativeness.
All 133 effect sizes included 53,184 subjects with GIA or IGD. Weighted average prevalence for GIA and IGD were 7.02 % (95 % CI, 6.09 %–8.08 %) and 2.47 % (95 % CI, 1.46 %–4.16 %) respectively. For GIA, prevalence was increased over time and prevalence rates variated among different scales. IGD prevalence was neither moderated by year, regions, nor sample representativeness.
The prevalence of GIA was higher than the prevalence of IGD. The GIA prevalence was increasing over time and variated with different assessments. Our results reveal that GIA may reflect a pattern of increasing human-machine interaction.
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The relationship between social media use and life satisfaction changes across adolescent development. Our analyses of two UK datasets comprising 84,011 participants (10–80 years old) find that the cross-sectional relationship between self-reported estimates of social media use and life satisfaction ratings is most negative in younger adolescents.
Read MoreThere's a new addiction in New Zealand - more than a third of Kiwis say they are hooked on their screens and many are blaming Covid for it. As the country enters its second week of lockdown, New Zealanders have been averaging five hours of screen time a day on top of using devices for work and school since the Covid pandemic started last year, a new NortonLifeLock study has found.
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