Comments: Study states that 5% of students, ages 12-18, have Internet addiction. It’s unclear what criteria researchers employed to assess IAD. Moreover the criteria were for “the presence of symptoms of behavioral addiction to online videogames and social networking sites“. Not a word about porn. IAD is much higher in male populations, yet this sample was equal numbers male/female.
Cyberpsychol Behav Soc Netw. 2012 Dec 19.
Source
Department of Methodology of Behavioural Sciences, Faculty of Psychology, University of Barcelona , Barcelona, Spain .
Abstract
Many researchers and professionals have reported nonsubstance addiction to online entertainments in adolescents. However, very few scales have been designed to assess problem Internet use in this population, in spite of their high exposure and obvious vulnerability.
The aim of this study was to review the currently available scales for assessing problematic Internet use and to validate a new scale of this kind for use, specifically in this age group, the Problematic Internet Entertainment Use Scale for Adolescents. The research was carried out in Spain in a gender-balanced sample of 1131 high school students aged between 12 and 18 years. Psychometric analyses showed the scale to be unidimensional, with excellent internal consistency (Cronbach’s alpha of 0.92), good construct validity, and positive associations with alternative measures of maladaptive Internet use.
This self-administered scale can rapidly measure the presence of symptoms of behavioral addiction to online videogames and social networking sites, as well as their degree of severity. The results estimate the prevalence of this problematic behavior in Spanish adolescents to be around 5 percent.
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