Preventing and combating Internet addiction : a concept review

The use of the Internet has brought a variety of conveniences to our modern life. Nonetheless, negative impacts are also created by addictive behavior to the Internet pervasively affecting one’s academic and working performance, family life, social relationships, physical health, and psychological well-being. Internet addiction is becoming a serious problem across the world, especially for adolescents. In the past years, several studies have examined the prevalence of youth Internet addiction across cultures and will be presented in this chapter. Some studies suggest that Internet addictive behavior is not a transient phenomenon that naturally disappears as adolescents grow up; this implies that prevention might be essential for addressing this issue. Finally, it is difficult to say whether Internet addiction is a stand-alone problem or not, given that it does not exist independently but is associated with other manifestations, as presented here.