SynthesisInternational journal of environmental research and public health2021
How Have Researchers Acknowledged and Controlled for Academic Work Activity When Measuring Medical Students' Internet Addiction? A Systematic Literature Review.
Synthesis in International journal of environmental research and public health, 2021. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 6 papers.
What it found
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Who cites it
6 citing papers in PubMed, 7 citations in OpenAlex.
- Association between internet addiction and sleep quality in medical students: a longitudinal study.Frontiers in psychology · 2025Article
- Internet Addiction in Undergraduate Students of the University of Medicine in Tirana, Albania.Materia socio-medica · 2023Article
- Internet Addiction.Life (Basel, Switzerland) · 2022Article
- Personality Traits of Croatian University Students with Internet Addiction.Behavioral sciences (Basel, Switzerland) · 2022Article
- Loneliness and problematic internet use: testing the role of interpersonal problems and motivation for internet use.BMC psychiatry · 2021Article
- Prevalence and Factors Associated with Problematic Internet Use among Ethiopian Undergraduate University Students in 2019.Journal of addiction · 2021Review
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
4 authors at 2 institutions in 2 countries.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
Internationally, medical students' Internet Addiction (IA) is widely studied. As medical students use the Internet extensively for work, we asked how researchers control for work-related Internet activity, and the extent to which this influences interpretations of "addiction" rates. A search of PubMed, CINAHL, Web of Science, Scopus, and Google Scholar was conducted on the search phrase of "medical students" and "internet addiction" in March 2020. In total, 98 studies met our criteria, 88 (90%) used Young's Internet Addiction Test, and the studies' IA rates ranged widely. Little note was taken of work-related activity, and, when discussed, had little to no impact on the interpretation of Internet "addiction". Studies seldom accounted for work-related activities, researcher bias appears to influence their position, "usage" appears conflated with "addiction", and correlations between "addiction" and negative behaviours are frequently confused with one-way causation. In spite of IA's not being officially recognised, few researchers questioned its validity. While IA may exist among medical students, its measurement is flawed; given the use of the Internet as a crucial medical education tool, there is the risk that conscientious students will be labelled "addicted", and poor academic performance may be attributed to this "addiction".
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Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.