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Is it meaningful to distinguish between generalized and specific Internet addiction? Evidence from a cross‐cultural study from G ermany, S weden, T aiwan and C hina
Author(s) -
Montag Christian,
Bey Katharina,
Sha Peng,
Li Mei,
Chen YaFei,
Liu WeiYin,
Zhu YiKang,
Li ChunBo,
Markett Sebastian,
Keiper Julia,
Reuter Martin
Publication year - 2015
Publication title -
asia‐pacific psychiatry
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.654
H-Index - 21
eISSN - 1758-5872
pISSN - 1758-5864
DOI - 10.1111/appy.12122
Subject(s) - addiction , the internet , pornography , psychology , internet privacy , computer science , world wide web , neuroscience , psychoanalysis
It has been hypothesized that two distinctive forms of Internet addiction exist. Here, generalized Internet addiction refers to the problematic use of the Internet covering a broad range of Internet‐related activities. In contrast, specific forms of Internet addiction target the problematic use of distinct online activities such as excessive online video gaming or activities in social networks. Methods The present study investigates the relationship between generalized and specific Internet addiction in a cross‐cultural study encompassing data from C hina, T aiwan, S weden and G ermany in n = 636 participants. In this study, we assessed – besides generalized Internet addiction – addictive behavior in the domains of online video gaming, online shopping, online social networks and online pornography. Results The results confirm the existence of distinct forms of specific Internet addiction. One exception, however, was established in five of the six samples under investigation: online social network addiction correlates in large amounts with generalized Internet addiction. Discussion I n general, it is of importance to distinguish between generalized and specific Internet addiction.