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.
Read the full article on Science Direct.
Video games have become so good, and provide such a sensory smorgasbord of action and colour, that children are becoming dangerously addicted. They’re playing for days on end, to the exclusion of everything else in their lives, including school, friends and family.
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In the past few years internet addiction (IA) and internet gaming disorder (IGD) have become very frequent, leading to many personality and psychiatric disorders including low self-esteem, impulsivity, poor sleep quality, mood disorder, and suicide. IA has been included in Appendix III of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual for Mental Disorders (DSM-5) as IGD. In addition, IA leads to many neuroanatomical and neurochemical alterations including cortical thinning of various components of the brain and altered dopaminergic reward circuitry.
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