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April 2011
Wall's Najar continues work to stem digital addictions
By Jamie Biesiada
It all started four years ago.
Wall's John Najar, and his late wife, Peggy, had their grandson Cole Devlin visiting. "He said, 'Grandpa, I'd like to play the computer,'" Mr. Najar recalled Cole, then 9, now 12, saying. However, Cole did not leave the conversation there. He warned his grandfather about "very bad things about the computer you should know about," Mr. Najar recalled.
The digital environment, in Cole's eyes, included bad words, a high level of violence, and negative portrayals of women, Mr. Najar said. Mrs. Najar, then a hospice worker and a poet, asked her husband to get on the case. "'John,'" Mr. Najar recalled her stating, "I want you to write up this new curriculum,' and it just took off from there."
Mr. Najar is the former principal of Old Mill School, currently working as an educational consultant focusing on digital addictions.
Last summer, he received a copyright for his course "An Addiction Prevention Class on the Negative Effects of Computer/Video Games on Children and Teens."
Most recently, he received a copyright last month on a new course, "The Digitally Addictive Family."
The copyrighted definition of the digitally addictive family -- which covers classes, seminars and the like on the topic -- discusses "the addictive nature of digital technology and its affect on the family and the resultant sense of isolation, silence and loss of verbal interaction between the family and the community."
"It is an honor," Mr. Najar said late last week of receiving the copyright. "I'm humbled by this."
The definition -- and subsequent class material -- is based on Mr. Najar's observations since that fateful day four years ago.
"What I observed is, the changing nature of the family has been affected by electronic technology," he said. A combination of video games, text messaging and more "was transforming our family life, where people are talking less."
For example, Mr. Najar said, just the other day, he saw a commercial on television featuring two men dining at a popular fast food chain. Instead of speaking to one another, they were text messaging each other.
Closer to home, he said, a woman came to him with a story of how she was planning on getting married. One morning at breakfast, he texted her to get him a piece of toast.
Mr. Najar said his advice to the man would be to seek mental counseling regarding what appeared to be a digital addiction.
"This is not a good situation," he said. "I'm hearing this from all over."
Communication, person-to-person, is key in families. "The remedy is inside all of us," Mr. Najar said. "The ability to stop, withdraw, monitor our time."
Digital addiction wears down the front portion of the brain, Mr. Najar said, leading to an addiction.
"Parents should sit down with their children -- I call it spiritual family management," he explained. By speaking, families can be regained, he said.
While electronics are OK as a support device, Mr. Najar said, face-to-face communication should be the primary form of communication within a family. Mr. Najar first noticed what appears to be a trend in digital addiction 20 years ago. He was walking on the boardwalk, and said hello to another walker -- he received no response, because the other party was listening to a Walkman.
"That is what's happening," he said. "We should have down time, but the down time should include intermittent talking with our families."
For instance, he said, when Mrs. Najar was alive, "I would tell her I love her -- I would not send her an email and tell her I love her. You have to pick up the phone and personally tell someone that." Currently, Mr. Najar is teaching courses discussing digital addictions and similar.
"They are not aware of this technology," he said. "We have cascading forces converging on the generation now using electronic media, and senior citizens now that are working closely as parents and grandparents." Between one in six and one in eight grandparents are taking an active role in raising children, Mr. Najar estimated, and are unsure how to handle a child's use of video games and electronics.
"They are concerned, so I want to educate them," he said.
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Virtual Gaming No Replacement For Real Exercise
ScienceDaily (Mar. 7, 2008) –Video games like Wii Sports and Dance Dance Revolution can play an important role in getting kids off the couch and involved in physical activity. But are they a replacement for traditional exercise?
Definitely not, says Colleen Greene, M.A., wellness coordinator for MFit, the health promotion division of the University of Michigan Health System.
"Virtual gaming is no replacement for real exercise," Greene notes. "It's a place to start, though. Kids can have fun doing it, they can feel a little better about actually trying the sport or activity."
A relatively recent addition to the video game universe, these games are interactive and can require as little activity as a swing of the wrist to play golf or tennis, or as much effort as an intense dance routine or the full punches in a virtual boxing match. Most of these games do not qualify as aerobic exercise, though they do require more activity than traditional video games.
"Real calories can be burned during virtual gaming, although some studies have recently shown that it may be 60 to 70 calories an hour," Greene notes. "This is nowhere near what an actual game or sport should be, which is three to four times that amount."
Greene doesn't discourage the use of these games – indeed, she notes, they can help to improve kids' confidence and hand-eye coordination.
"Active virtual gaming can have a role in a healthy lifestyle. It's a place to start and have some fun. It's a way to try something new in a non-threatening environment," she says. "But really, you ought to get outside, give it a try and have some real fun."
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommend that kids perform 60 minutes of physical activity on most days, preferably daily. The percentage of young people in the United States who are overweight has more than tripled since 1980.
 Violent Video Game Feed Aggression In Kids In Japan And U.S.
ScienceDaily (Nov. 4, 2008) — t's not just American kids who become more aggressive by playing violent video games. A new study — presented last month at the inaugural seminar sponsored by Iowa State University's Center for the Study of Violence — showed effects of violent video games on aggression over a 3-6 month period in children from Japan as well as the United States.
ISU Distinguished Professor of Psychology Craig Anderson — director of the Center for the Study of Violence — presented the results from the study, which is published in the November issue of Pediatrics, the professional journal of the American Academy of Pediatrics.
The research links an earlier ISU study of 364 American children ages 9-12 with two similar studies of more than 1,200 children between the ages of 12-18 from Japan. It found that exposure to violent video games was a causal risk factor for aggression and violence in those children.
"Basically what we found was that in all three samples, a lot of violent video game play early in a school year leads to higher levels of aggression during the school year, as measured later in the school year — even after you control for how aggressive the kids were at the beginning of the year," said Anderson, who was recently elected president-elect for the International Society for Research on Aggression (IRSA).
ISU Assistant Professor of Psychology Douglas Gentile, the center's associate director, and Akira Sakamoto — an associate professor of psychology at Ochanomizu University and a leading violent video games researcher from Japan — collaborated with Anderson and additional Japanese researchers on the study.
Studying kids video game habits and aggression
Researchers assessed the children's video game habits and their level of physical aggression against each other at two different times during the school year.
"The studies varied somewhat in the length of time between what we're calling time one and time two (times between the reports of video game use and physical behavior)," Anderson said. "The shortest duration was three months and the longest was six months.
"Each of the three samples showed significant increases in aggression by children who played a lot of violent video games," he said.
Anderson began collaborating with Japanese researchers on the study several years ago when he visited Japan to give an invited address at the International Simulation and Gaming Association convention. He says Japan's cultural differences with the U.S. made it attractive for the comparison studies.
"The culture is so different and their overall violence rate is so much lower than in the U.S.," Anderson said. "The argument has been made — it's not a very good argument, but it's been made by the video game industry — that all our research on violent video game effects must be wrong because Japanese kids play a lot of violent video games and Japan has a low violence rate.
"By gathering data from Japan, we can test that hypothesis directly and ask, 'Is it the case that Japanese kids are totally unaffected by playing violent video games?' And of course, they aren't," he said. "They're affected pretty much the same way American kids are."
"It is important to realize that violent video games do not create schools shooters," Gentile said. "They create opportunities to be vigilant for enemies, to practice aggressive ways of responding to conflict and to see aggression as acceptable. In practical terms, that means that when bumped in the hallway, children begin to see it as hostile and react more aggressively in response to it. Violent games are certainly not the only thing that can increase children's aggression, but these studies show that they are one part of the puzzle in both America and Japan."
Report Shows 'Unequivocal Evidence' That Media Violence Has Significant Negative Impact On Children
ScienceDaily (Mar. 26, 2004) — Research report provides 'A scientific assessment of research on the influence of violent television and films, video games, and music "reveals unequivocal evidence that media violence increases the likelihood of aggressive and violent behavior" in children and youth, according to a report published in Psychological Science in the Public Interest, a journal of the American Psychological Society.
The report reviews the large body of research that has investigated the ways in which violent media influence behavior. Across all media genres, the authors found that the research consistently shows that even short-term exposure "increases the likelihood of physically and verbally aggressive behavior, aggressive thoughts, and aggressive emotions."
The authors of the report, "The Influence of Media Violence on Youth," are Craig A. Anderson, Iowa State University; Leonard Berkowitz, University of Wisconsin; Edward Donnerstein, University of Arizona; L. Rowell Huesmann, University of Michigan; James D. Johnson, University of North Carolina-Wilmington; Daniel Linz, University of California, Santa Barbara; Neil M. Malamuth, University of California, Los Angeles; and Ellen Wartella, University of Texas at Austin.
In the short-term, media violence can increase aggression by priming aggressive thoughts and decision processes, increasing physiological arousal, and triggering a tendency to imitate observed behaviors. In the long-term, repeated exposure can produce lasting increases in aggressive thought patterns and aggression-supporting beliefs about social behavior, and can reduce individuals' normal negative emotional responses to violence.
The pervasive nature of violent media in society makes it difficult to minimize children's exposure. Even with parental supervision, interpretation, and control of children's media use, the available research suggests "no one is wholly immune to the effects of media violence."
"Meeting the larger societal challenge of providing children and youth with a much healthier media diet may prove more difficult and costly," the authors wrote, "especially if the scientific, news, public policy, and entertainment communities fail to educate the general public about the real risks of media-violence exposure to children and youth."
 Ohio teen convicted of killing mom over video game
By M.R. KROPKO
Associated Press Writer
1/12/2009
Although a teenager's obsession with a violent video game may have warped his sense of reality, the boy is guilty of murdering his mother and wounding his father after they took "Halo 3" away from him, a judge ruled Monday.
"I firmly believe that Daniel Petric had no idea at the time he hatched this plot that if he killed his parents they would be dead forever," Lorain County Common Pleas Judge James Burge said.
Nonetheless, Burge rejected the defense attorneys' argument that Petric, 17, was not guilty by reason of insanity.
The defense didn't contest that Petric shot his parents in October 2007 after they took the game away from him, but insisted that the teen's youth and addiction made him less responsible.
Petric may have been addicted, but the evidence also showed he planned the crime for weeks, said Burge, who found the teenager guilty of aggravated murder, attempted aggravated murder and other charges.
Tried as an adult, Petric faces a maximum possible penalty of life in prison without parole. The judge didn't set a sentencing date.
The teen's mother, Susan Petric, 43, died of a gunshot wound to the head. Her husband, Mark Petric, a minister at New Life Assembly of God in Wellington, also was shot in the head but survived.
After the verdict was announced, Petric turned to look at his father seated behind him in the courtroom. Mark Petric, who previously said he has forgiven his son, gave an encouraging nod.
Mark Petric and other relatives left the court without comment.
Prosecutors said Petric planned to kill his parents because he was angry that his father would not allow him to play the video game, in which players shoot alien monsters that have taken over the Earth.
On the night of the shooting, Petric used his father's key to open a lockbox and remove a 9 mm handgun and the game.
Mark Petric testified that his son came into the room and asked: "Would you guys close your eyes? I have a surprise for you." He testified that he expected a pleasant surprise. Then his head went numb from the gunshot.
Deputy prosecuting attorney Anthony Cillo argued during the trial that the teenager had planned to make it appear to be a murder-suicide by putting the gun in his father's hand.
Defense Attorney James Kersey said that when the teenager fled the grisly scene, he only took one item with him: the "Halo 3" game.
Bungie LLC, once part of Microsoft, developed the Xbox 360-exclusive Halo 3, and Microsoft owns the game's intellectual property. Microsoft declined to comment beyond a statement: "We are aware of the situation and it is a tragic case."
Is video-game addiction a mental disorder?
By Lindsey Tanner
Associated Press Writer
2009
CHICAGO - The telltale signs are ominous: teens holing up in their rooms, ignoring friends, family, even food and a shower, while grades plummet and belligerence soars.
The culprit isn't alcohol or drugs. It's video games, which for certain kids can be as powerfully addictive as heroin, some doctors contend.
A leading council of the nation's largest doctors' group wants to have this behavior officially classified as a psychiatric disorder, to raise awareness and enable sufferers to get insurance coverage for treatment.
In a report prepared for the American Medical Association's annual policy meeting starting Saturday in Chicago, the council asks the group to lobby for the disorder to be included in a widely used mental illness manual created and published by the American Psychiatric Association. AMA delegates could vote on the proposal as early as Monday.
It likely won't happen without heated debate. Video game makers scoff at the notion that their products can cause a psychiatric disorder. Even some mental health experts say labeling the habit a formal addiction is going too far.
Dr. James Scully, the psychiatric association's medical director, said the group will seriously consider the AMA report in the long process of revising the diagnostic manual. The current manual was published in 1994; the next edition is to be completed in 2012.
Up to 90 percent of American youngsters play video games and as many as 15 percent of them –more than 5 million kids –may be addicted, according to data cited in the AMA council's report.
Joyce Protopapas of Frisco, Texas, said her 17-year-old son, Michael, was a video addict. Over nearly two years, video and Internet games transformed him from an outgoing, academically gifted teen into a reclusive manipulator who flunked two 10th grade classes and spent several hours day and night playing a popular online video game called World of Warcraft.
"My father was an alcoholic ... and I saw exactly the same thing" in Michael, Protopapas said. "We battled him until October of last year," she said. "We went to therapists, we tried taking the game away.
"He would threaten us physically. He would curse and call us every name imaginable," she said. "It was as if he was possessed."
When she suggested to therapists that Michael had a video game addiction, "nobody was familiar with it," she said. "They all pooh-poohed it."
Last fall, the family found a therapist who "told us he was addicted, period." They sent Michael to a therapeutic boarding school, where he has spent the past six months –at a cost of $5,000 monthly that insurance won't cover, his mother said.
A support group called On-Line Gamers Anonymous has numerous postings on its Web site from gamers seeking help. Liz Woolley, of Harrisburg, Pa., created the site after her 21-year-old son fatally shot himself in 2001 while playing an online game she says destroyed his life.
In a February posting, a 13-year-old identified only as Ian told of playing video games for nearly 12 hours straight, said he felt suicidal and wondered if he was addicted.
"I think i need help," the boy said.
Postings also come from adults, mostly men, who say video game addiction cost them jobs, family lives and self-esteem.
According to the report prepared by the AMA's Council on Science and Public Health, based on a review of scientific literature, "dependence-like behaviors are more likely in children who start playing video games at younger ages."
Overuse most often occurs with online role-playing games involving multiple players, the report says. Blizzard Entertainment's teen-rated, monster-killing World of Warcraft is among the most popular. A company spokesman declined to comment on whether the games can cause addiction.
A woman in the New Haven, Conn., area who bought the game for her 15-year-old son last year, says he got hooked on it.
"Now that I look back on it, it's like I went out and bought him his first Jack Daniel's," said the 49-year-old woman who didn't want her name used to spare her son from ridicule.
Dr. Martin Wasserman, a pediatrician who heads the Maryland State Medical Society, said the AMA proposal will help raise awareness and called it "the right thing to do." But Michael Gallagher, president of the Entertainment Software Association, said the trade group sides with psychiatrists "who agree that this so-called 'video-game addiction' is not a mental disorder."
"The American Medical Association is making premature conclusions without the benefit of complete and thorough data," Gallagher said.
Dr. Karen Pierce, a psychiatrist at Chicago's Children's Memorial Hospital, said she sees at least two children a week who play video games excessively.
"I saw somebody this week who hasn't been to bed, hasn't showered -- because of video games," she said. "He is really a mess."
She said she treats it like any addiction and creating a separate diagnosis is unnecessary.
Dr. Michael Brody, head of a TV and media committee at the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, agreed. He praised the AMA council for bringing attention to the problem, but said excessive video-game playing could be a symptom for other things, such as depression or social anxieties that already have their own diagnoses.
"You could make lots of behavioral things into addictions. Why stop at video gaming?" Brody asked. Why not Blackberries, cell phones, or other irritating habits, he said.
 Playing Video Games May Cause Eyestrain
Encourage Safe Game Play Guidelines for Your Child
By Troy Bedinghaus, O.D., About.com
February 19, 2008
Many parents wonder if spending too much time playing video games can hurt their child. Questions arise about obesity and aggressive behavior. While extended periods of time playing video games may possibly affect a children's weight and behavior, many parents often forget about the possible effects on their eyes and vision.
Playing video games for extended amounts of time can cause children to experience many of the same symptoms seen in computer vision syndrome1 in adults. Extensive viewing of the game screen can lead to eye discomfort, fatigue, blurry vision and headaches. Kids seem to become so engrossed in video games that they forget to take breaks.
Prolonged game play without significant breaks can cause eye focusing problems, as well as eye irritation.
Focusing problems: The eyes focus much differently on a video screen than on a flat surface, such as a piece of notebook paper. When looking at printed material, the brain and eyes understand exactly what distance at which to focus. When looking at a video screen, the eyes are constantly changing focus, making the eyes very tired. Furthermore, when playing video games, the eyes tend to become "locked in" to the screen. This may make it difficult for the eyes to focus easily on other objects, even long after the video game is turned off.
Irritation: Kids tend to blink much less frequently while absorbed in a video game. This reduced blinking can significantly affect tearflow, sometimes resulting in dryness and irritation.
If your children enjoy playing video games, encourage them to take frequent breaks. Set a timer for 20 minutes, and have them do something else for 5 minutes when the buzzer sounds. Also, make sure your children sit as far away as possible from the video screen. The minimum recommended distance in the case of console games, such as PlayStation, Gamecube, Xbox or Wii, is 6 feet. Setting guidelines for your children will help prevent the negative effects that prolonged video gameplay can have on their eyes.
 Nintendo Sheds "Family Friendly" Reputation
with MadWorld's Release
Institute Urges Parents to Watch What Their Kids Watch,
Play What Their Kids Play.
Hit HERE to read the article
ADOLESCENTS AND ELECTRONIC MEDIA: GROWING UP PLUGGED IN
Hit HERE to read the article
Family time eroding in U.S. as Internet use soars
Associated Press
6/15/2009
NEW YORK (AP) —Whether it's around the dinner table or just in front of the TV, U.S. families say they are spending less time together.
The decline in family time coincides with a rise in Internet use and the popularity of social networks, though a new study stopped just short of assigning blame.
The Annenberg Center for the Digital Future at the University of Southern California is reporting this week that 28% of Americans it interviewed last year said they have been spending less time with members of their households. That's nearly triple the 11% who said that in 2006.
These people did not report spending less time with their friends, however.
Michael Gilbert, a senior fellow at the center, said people report spending less time with family members just as social networks like Facebook, Twitter and MySpace are booming, along with the importance people place on them.
Five-year-old Facebook's active user base, for example, has surged to more than 200 million active users, up from 100 million last August.
Meanwhile, more people say they are worried about how much time kids and teenagers spend online. In 2000, when the center began its annual surveys on Americans and the Internet, only 11% of respondents said that family members under 18 were spending too much time online. By 2008, that grew to 28%.
"Most people think of the Internet and (our) digital future as boundless, and I do too," Gilbert said.
But, he added, "it can't be a good thing that families are spending less face-to-face time together. Ultimately it leads to less cohesive and less communicative families."
In the first half of the decade, people reported spending an average of 26 hours per month with their families. By 2008, however, that shared time had dropped by more than 30%, to about 18 hours.
The advent of new technologies has, in some ways, always changed the way family members interact.
Cellphones make it easier for parents to keep track of where their children are, while giving kids the kind of privacy they wouldn't have had in the days of landlines.
Television has cut into dinner time, and as TV sets became cheaper, they also multiplied, so that kids and parents no longer have to congregate in the living room to watch it.
But Gilbert said the Internet is so engrossing, and demands so much more attention than other technologies, that it can disrupt personal boundaries in ways other technologies wouldn't have.
"It's not like television, where you can sit around with your family and watch," he said. The Internet, he noted, is mostly one-on-one.
Likely because they can afford more Web-connected gadgets, higher-income families reported greater loss of family time than those who make less money. And more women than men said they felt ignored by a family member using the Internet.
The center's latest survey was a random poll of 2,030 people ages 12 and up was conducted April 9 to June 30, 2008, and has a margin of sampling error of plus or minus 3 percentage points.
China to ban violent online games
Associated Press
7/28/2009
BEJING (AP) —China has banned websites from advertising or linking to games that glamorize violence, another step in China's censorship campaign aimed at ensuring social stability ahead of the 60th anniversary of communist rule on Oct. 1.
A notice posted on the Culture Ministry website on Monday said games that promote drug use, obscenities, gambling, or crimes such as rape, vandalism and theft are "against public morality and the nation's fine cultural traditions."
"Such online games promote the glorification of mafia life — and are a serious threat to the moral standards of society causing vulnerable young people to be adversely affected," the notice said. The ban on the websites starts immediately.
No details were given on how the law would be implemented, but the notice called for law enforcement bodies to ensure websites adhere to the new law.
China has the world's largest population of Internet users, more than 298 million, and the world's most extensive system of Web monitoring and censorship.
While the government claims the main targets of its Web censorship are pornography, online gambling, and other sites deemed harmful to society, critics say that often acts as cover for detecting and blocking sensitive political content that can be found on sites such as Facebook, Twitter and Google-owned YouTube, which are all blocked in China.
 Depression, ADHD Increase Teens' Risk for Internet Addiction
Health.com
10/05/2009
MONDAY, Oct. 5 (Health.com) – Some children and teens are more likely than their peers to become addicted to the Internet, and a new study suggests it's more likely to happen if kids are depressed, hostile, or have attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) or social phobia.
Although an Internet addiction is not an official diagnosis, signs of a potential problem include using the Internet so much for game playing or other purposes that it interferes with everyday life and decision-making ability. (The diagnosis is being considered for the 2012 edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, the "bible" of mental ailments published by the American Psychiatric Association).
Too much of a good thing
Past research suggests that 1.4% to 17.9% of adolescents are addicted to the Internet, with percentages higher in Eastern nations than in Western nations, according to the study published Monday in the Archives of Pediatrics & Adolescent Medicine.
In the survey of 2,293 seventh-grade students in Taiwan, 10.8% developed an Internet addiction, which was determined by a high score on an Internet addiction scale. Definitions vary, but an Internet addiction usually includes symptoms such as spending a lot of time on the Internet (especially more time than intended), an inability to cut back on usage, a preoccupation with online activities, and symptoms of withdrawal such as anxiety, boredom, or irritability after a few days of not going online.
The researchers from Kaohsiung Medical University Hospital, in Taiwan, followed the youngsters for two years and found that ADHD and hostility were linked to Internet addiction in children in general. In girls–but not boys–depression and social phobia also predicted problems.
Boys were at a higher risk of Internet addiction than girls, and those who used the Internet for more than 20 hours a week, every day, or for online gaming, were at higher risk as well.
The Internet as therapy
Michael Gilbert, a senior fellow at the Center for the Digital Future at the University of Southern California's Annenberg School for Communication, says the findings were no surprise.
"The study's indication that children who are hyperactive or diagnosed ADHD are finding an outlet on the Web makes such perfect sense," he says, because those children crave the constant stimulation of fast-paced video games and interactive social networks.
Kids with depression, anger issues, or social problems also turn to the Internet as therapy, adds Gilbert, who was not involved in the study. "They can take on an avatar or a different identity, and can contact other kids with the same problems and social inadequacies; they don't have to function in conventional social ways."
And while Gilbert is not surprised by the research--he regularly studies the impact of the Internet and cell phone usage on family relationships--he says it's important that it is given the attention it deserves.
"I don't get the feeling when I talk to therapists that they really understand the concept of addiction to the Internet," he says. "They think more in terms of pornography sites or gambling sites specifically, but Internet addiction itself is not fully understood yet by the therapeutic community."
 Teen Internet addicts more likely to self harm: study
China Daily
12/04/2009
Sydney – Teenagers who are addicted to the Internet are more likely to engage in self-harm behavior, according to an Australian-Chinese study.
Researchers surveyed 1,618 adolescents aged 13 to 18 from China's Guangdong province about behavior such as hitting themselves, pulling their own hair, or pinching or burning themselves, and gave them a test to gauge Internet addiction.
Internet addiction has been classified as a mental health problem since the mid-1990s with symptoms similar to other addictions.
The test found that about 10 percent of the students surveyed were moderately addicted to the Internet, while less than one percent were severely addicted.
The students ranked as moderately addicted to the Internet were 2.4 times more likely to have self-injured one to five times in the past 6 months than students without an addiction, said Dr. Lawrence Lam from the University of Notre Dame Australia.
The moderately-to-severely addicted students were almost five times more likely than non-addicted students to have self-injured six or more times in the past 6 months, Lam and his colleagues from Guangzhou's Sun Yat-Sen University reported.
"In recent years, with the greater availability of the Internet in most Asian countries, Internet addiction has become an increasing mental problem among adolescents," the researchers said in their study published in the journal Injury Prevention.
"Many studies have reported associations between Internet addiction, psychiatric symptoms and depression among adolescents."
They said their results suggested a "strong and significant" association between Internet addiction and self-injury in adolescence even after accounting for other variables previously associated with the behavior, including depression, family dissatisfaction, or stressful life events.
They said this suggested that Internet addiction is an independent risk factor for self-injurious behavior.
Experts interpret Internet addiction, among other things, as feelings of depression, nervousness, moodiness when not online, which only go away when the addict gets back online.
Fantasizing or being preoccupied about being online are other signs of Internet addiction.
"All these behaviors may be rooted in some common – factors that require further exploration," they said.
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