1. ddobbs
  2. Study: Internet addiction a bunch of bunk

Study: Internet addiction a bunch of bunk

By ddobbs on December 16, 2008.

Is there such a thing as internet addiction? Mind Hacks says the debate should be over:

A study just published in the journal CyberPsychology and Behavior has reviewed all of the available scientific studies on internet addiction and found them to be mostly crap. And not just slightly lacking, really pretty awful.

To quote from the research summary:

The analysis showed that previous studies have utilized inconsistent criteria to define Internet addicts, applied recruiting methods that may cause serious sampling bias, and examined data using primarily exploratory rather than confirmatory data analysis techniques to investigate the degree of association rather than causal relationships among variables.

Rather disappointingly though, the authors just suggest that better research is needed when it's quite obvious that the whole concept is fundamentally flawed.

>

Whole (not very long) post is worth a read, as is most everything at MH.

Other commentary (also via Hacks) resides at Dr. Shock and PsychCentral. The study is here.

Tags
Brains and minds
Digital culture

More like this

Responding to mynym on....well, everything
Our new troll, mynym, has been a busy little beaver, leaving no fewer than 16 comments in under 2 hours. Looks like he is trying really hard to make his prediction of getting banned a self-fulfilling prophecy by being a major league pain in the ass. His M.O. isn't hard to discern; it appears to be…
New study finds link between mass job losses and teen suicide behaviors
Previous research has documented a link between downturns in the economy and suicide among adults. But how do those downturns ripple throughout families and communities, and in particular, how do massive job losses affect the mental health of teens? A new study has found that, sadly, many teens are…
Rebecca Watson's Skepticon talk is NOT an example of science denialism
I was recently pointed to this post by Edward Clint which purports to show Rebecca Watson using the 5 tactics of science denialism during her talk "How Girls Evolved to Shop" which was critical of evolutionary psychology at Skepticon. I watched her talk, found it entertaining, informative,…
New and Exciting in PLoS this week
Distorted Views of Biodiversity: Spatial and Temporal Bias in Species Occurrence Data: Historical as well as current data on species distributions are needed to track changes in biodiversity. Species distribution data are found in a variety of sources but it is likely that they include different…

I don't know that it's so much the addictability of the internet as it is the nature of addiction in the human brain. Talking in ignorance here but, aren't there two types of addictions ~ Biological and Psychological? I think psychologically a human can become addicted to anything. Mind over Matter.

KAS