Investigation of college students' internet addiction and analysis of its correlation with impulsive choice / 中华行为医学与脑科学杂志

ABSTRACT

Objective To investigate on the students' network usage,addiction and influencing factors at a certain university and analyze its correlation with impulsive choice.Methods Multi-class sampling method was applied.1 777 students were selected from the School of Clinical Medicine,School of Nursing,School of Public Health,School of Mental Health,School of Medical Laboratory Science,Department of Stomatology,School of Pharmacy,School of Management and Department of Biology,including 1 534 medical majors,accounting for 86.3％ and 243 non-medical majors,accounting for 13.7％.Results 121 students were addicted to the internet,accounting for 6.8％ of the selected students,while 1 656 students were free from the internet addiction,accounting for 93.2％ of the selected students.Among all the addicts,96 were from medical majors,accounting for 79.3％ and 25 were from non-medical majors,accounting for 20.7％.As for the online activities,boys loved computer games while girls preferred to watch movies,listen to music and shop.At the same time,most of the junior students and non-medical majors played games online.As for the length of time,students spending 5 and more hours everyday on the internet accounted for 3.4％.As for the sites,medical majors usually used their cell-phones while non-medical majors mostly got on line at their dorms.Probably due to the boys' preference for computer games,a larger proportion of boys getting on line at school dorms and internet bars off the campus.Most of the girls chose to use their cell-phones.More junior students surferred the internet at dorms while more senior students used their cell-phones.As for the function of the medical knowledge on the prevention and treatment of internet addiction,9.8％ of the students held that medical knowledge had a great effect on the prevention and treatment of internet addiction,61.5％ believed in a general effect,while 28.6％ of the students thought it useless.The multi-factor analysis showed that grade,home address and the communication with parents all attribute to internet addiction.Internet addiction was significantly associated with impulsiveness,and 3 dimensionality of impulsive choice (P＜ 0.01).Conclusion There is higher incidence of internet addiction among the junior students,students from the urban areas and those who lack communication with parents.Grade,home address and situation of communicating with parents are the important factors for internet addiction.Internet addiction is close association with impulsive choice.