Young – CBT study

Although the internet has been around for over 20 years, research into its addiction is still quite new and this type of addiction has only been recognised within the last decade. Therefore, very little research has been carried out into what types of treatment for this sort of addiction are most useful.

Cognitive behaviour therapy (CBT) is a treatment which helps an individual to examine their thought processes and subsequently pick out and amend any thoughts, which may be having a detrimental effect on their mental health and be influential, in this case, in maintaining an addiction.

Aim

Young wanted to find out if CBT would prove to be a useful intervention in the treatment of internet addiction.

Method

• 214 participants were involved in the study, all of whom were receiving CBT at the time of the research. 42% were women and 58% were men, with mean ages of 38 and 46 respectively
• Participants were screened using an IAT (internet addiction test), which is a validated test that examines symptoms of internet addiction such as a user’s preoccupation with internet use, ability to control online use, extent of hiding or lying about online use, and continued online use despite consequences of the behaviour
• Initial CBT sessions gathered familial background, the nature of the presenting problem, its onset, and severity
• Cognitive behavioural treatment was used to address symptoms related to computer use, specifically abstinence from problematic online applications and strategies to control online use
• Counselling also focused on behavioural issues or other underlying factors contributing to online abuse such as problems within the marriage, job burnout, problems with co-workers, or academic troubles, depending upon the unique situation of each participant
• Current use of the internet was routinely evaluated and the effectiveness of treatment was assessed after the third, eighth and twelfth session and upon six-month follow-up

Results

• Of the 214 participants, the results of 114 of these were used
• Men were most addicted to online pornography (30%), sexual online chat rooms (10%), online gambling (10%) and online gaming (8%), respectively
• Women were most addicted to online chat rooms (30%), both sexual and general, online auction houses (4%), and in a minority of cases, one woman was addicted to online gaming (2%) and one to online shopping (2%)
• The majority of participants showed continuous improvement by the third session, effective symptom management by the eighth and twelfth sessions, and overall improved symptom maintenance upon six-month follow-up
• Participants were able to maintain motivation to stop abusing the internet and improve online time management most effectively early in the counselling process

Conclusions

CBT proved useful in most cases in helping individuals to decrease their thoughts and behaviours that were most associated with compulsive internet usage.

Strengths of the study

• This was the first study of its kind and therefore paved the way for future research
• All methods of test were standardised and so this increases the reliability of the results

Weakness of the study

• The results relied on participant self-report, which is subject to demand characteristics
• The results only showed short-term results and therefore internet addiction may have resumed in the long term
• 114 is not a large sample size and therefore results cannot be confidently generalised