Page 346 - merged

S085-1

The Relationship Between Internet Addiction and Social Withdrawal Among
Students in Japan

Tomohiro Shirasaka1, Masaru Tateno2, Masaya Tayama3, Toshikazu Saito3

1Department of Neuropsychiatry, Teine Keijinkai Hospital, Japan 2Department of Psychiatry, Tokiwa Hospital,
Japan 3Department of Psychiatry, Miki mental clinic, Japan

Background/Objective: The Internet was originally designed to facilitate communication and
research activities. However, there has been a dramatic increase in the use of the Internet in recent
years for education, entertainment, including video games. Internet addiction as a phenomena has
been described by researchers as excessive or compulsive use of computers that interferes with daily
life. Social withdrawal has increasingly become a problem in Japan and has been hypothesized to be
related to internet addiction. Particularly amongst students, problematic internet use may be a major
factor of social withdrawal. We conducted a survey of internet addiction and social withdrawal
among students and workers to examine this hypothesis.

Method: Subjects were 63 university students and 56 company workers. To examine the relationship
between internet addiction and social withdrawal, we administered the Internet Addiction Test (IAT)
and the UCLA Loneliness Scale (ULS), a measure of social isolation, to all subjects.

Result: Students tended to score higher than workers on the IAT (Student µ= 36.3, Worker µ = 31.1).
For students considered addictive internet users, we found a significant correlation between the ULS
and the IAT (r=0.549, p<0.05), suggesting that social isolation and internet addiction are associated
with each other. Workers tended to score higher on the ULS than students (Worker µ=40.4, Student µ
=37.5). For workers who were not addictive internet users, we found a mild, negative correlation
between the ULS and the IAT (r=-0.285, p<0.05), suggesting that use of the internet for workers was
not a compensatory behavior.

Conclusion: Based upon the IAT, we found that more students than workers reported problems with
internet use. Based upon the ULS, more workers reported feelings of loneliness than students.
Workers’ loneliness did not appear to be related to their use of the internet, but amongst students with
internet addiction, loneliness appeared to be associated with internet use.

Reference: Guo J, Chen L, Wang X, et al. The Relationship Between Internet Addiction and
Depression Among Migrant Children and Left-Behind Children in China. Cyberpsychol Behav Soc
Netw. Sep 24 2012.