Compulsive Internet and Prevalence Substance Use among Spanish Adolescents.

Sonia Fernández-Aliseda,Francesc Valls-Fonayet,Inma Pastor-Gosálbez,Angel Belzunegui-Eraso

doi:10.3390/ijerph17238747

Sonia Fernández-Aliseda, Francesc Valls-Fonayet + Show 2 more

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https://doi.org/10.3390/ijerph17238747

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Abstract

This paper analyses compulsive Internet use among Spanish adolescents as measured by the Compulsive Internet Use Scale (CIUS) of the ESTUDES 2016 survey (national survey on drug use in secondary schools), which was recently added to the statistical programme of the Spanish National Plan on Drugs. We examined two subsamples of Spanish adolescents (those who suffer from compulsive Internet use and those who do not) while taking into account gender and age. Our general hypothesis was that adolescents who suffer from compulsive Internet use have a greater prevalence of alcohol, tobacco, cannabis, sedative, and new substance consumption as well as a greater prevalence of modes of consumption such as getting drunk, drinking with friends in public places (botellón), and binge drinking. While our results confirm these assumptions, they also suggest that gender and age play an ambivalent role in these associations.

Highlights

The younger generations have grown up in an era when the Internet has become a central feature of their lives [1]
The analyses presented below, which were conducted with microdata from that survey, focus on the possible associations between compulsive Internet use on the one hand and the prevalence of substance use and the main consumption patterns on the other
Our hypothesis was that compulsive Internet use may be associated with a greater consumption of substances among adolescents

Summary

Introduction

The younger generations have grown up in an era when the Internet has become a central feature of their lives [1]. Social interactions, studies, leisure activities, and all kinds of information searches are mediated by the Internet and the social networks [5]. We have moved from the so-called Gutenberg Galaxy to what we might call the Internet Galaxy, i.e., the global-relational context in which the new generations are conducting most of their activities. At the transitional stage of adolescence, Internet consumption patterns can develop that may lead to addiction, or at least to problematic uses [6,7,8] that can have negative consequences on a teenager’s psychosocial well-being [9]. It is at this stage of life that the consumption of the most prevalent substances (alcohol, tobacco and, to a lesser extent, cannabis and others) begins

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