Teenaged Internet Addicts More Likely to Inflict Self Harm

Posted on December 11, 2009 in Consumer Goods, Health & Medicine, Recent Studies, Technology

A study of Chinese teenagers found that those addicted to the Internet are more likely to harm themselves as their peers.

The study included 1,618 adolescents aged 13 to 18 from China’s Guangdong Province. Researchers asked the teens questions about behavior like hitting, pinching or burning themselves, and gave them a test to determine Internet addiction.

The researchers reported in the journal Injury Prevention that 90% of the survey participants were normal users of the Internet, but 10% were moderately addicted and 0.6% were severely addicted. The addicted adolescents suffered from nervousness and depression when they weren’t online, but felt better when they were on the Internet.

Students ranked as moderately-to-severely addicted to the Internet were almost five times more likely to have self-injured six or more times in the last 6 months, as opposed to non-addicted students. Internet addiction has been classified as a mental health problem since the mid-1990s.