Internet Addiction of Adolescents in Taiwan:
An Interview Study
CHIN-CHUNG TSAI, Ed.D., and SUNNY S.J. LIN, Ph.D.
ABSTRACT
This study presented a follow-up investigation of a series of studies about Taiwanese
cents’ Internet addiction. Through analyzing a series of questionnaires, 10 Taiwanese
adoles-cents with Internet addiction were selected for in-depth interviews. Adolesadoles-cents’ interview
data revealed the following: First, almost all of the interviewed adolescents exhibited most of
the symptoms of Internet addiction as identified by previous studies, including compulsive
use and withdrawal, tolerance, and related problems of school, health, family, finance, and
time management. Moreover, almost all of the interviewed adolescents stated that messages
on the Internet became the primary source of their information and knowledge. Many of them
were addicted to the messages and activity on the Internet, but not by the Internet as a medium
per se. Also, the world of the Internet seemed to become a place to relieve adolescents’
de-pression. Most of the interviewed adolescents self-declared that they were Internet addicts,
but none of them could clearly state what to do with such an addiction. Psychologists and
ed-ucators should pay more attention to this and then propose possible solutions for adolescents.
649 Volume 6, Number 6, 2003
© Mary Ann Liebert, Inc.
INTRODUCTION
T
HE INTERNET has introduced society to quite a different lifestyle than previously. People can effectively acquire information and solve many daily problems through the Internet, such as taking on-line courses and making hotel reservations. In spite of the widely perceived merits of the Internet, pol-icy makers, psychologists, and educators have been aware of the negative impacts of its use, especially the excessive use and the related physical and psy-chological problems.1–4 Studies have utilized meth-ods to identify Internet addicts, and have used terms such as “Internet dependents,” “problematic Internet users,” or “pathological Internet users.”5,6 Most of the studies utilized quantitative methods, such as questionnaires, to assess Internetaddic-tion,7–10 though few of them have explored this issue through in-depth interviews. It is suggested that the qualitative data gathered from interviews may not only help researchers interpret the find-ings revealed by quantitative methods, but also produce a more detailed picture about Internet addiction.
Adolescents have gradually become a major pop-ulation of Internet users. However, there are few studies on adolescent Internet addiction; most of the relevant studies have explored college students’ or adults’ Internet addiction.7–9,11,12This study, a fol-low-up study of a series of related research conducted in Taiwan,5,13 was intended to explore Internet ad-diction in Taiwanese adolescents by interviewing 10 Taiwanese high school adolescents who showed Internet addiction.
METHODS
Subjects
The initial sample of this study included more than 700 Taiwanese high school adolescents (16–17 years old) having experiences of using the Inter-net. The sample was selected across different demo-graphic areas in Taiwan. These adolescents were asked to finish two questionnaires about Internet addiction, the scale developed by Young,10and one developed by the authors,5,13 called the “Internet Addiction Scale for High School Students in Tai-wan” (IAST).
By Young’s definition,10those having a score of 5 or higher on Young’s questionnaire are Internet ad-dicts. By this definition, a total of ninety students were viewed as Internet addicts in this study. For the IAST scale, four factors were extracted and ac-counted for 53.7% of total variance explained: (1) tolerance (10 items), (2) compulsive use and with-drawal (seven items), (3) related problems: family, school, and health (eight items), and (4) related problems: interpersonal and financial (four items). It was found that the reliability and validity index of IAST were both satisfactory.13Subjects who scored more than 80 on the IASR (n = 88) were categorized as the Internet addicts. Consequently, about 60 stu-dents in the sample were identified as Internet addicts by both the Young’s scale10 and IAST.5,13 Among these adolescents, 10 were selected for an in-depth interview, two of them female. This se-lected sample also confirmed the stereotype of In-ternet addicts that addicts are more likely to be male.2,14 The selected subjects also came from dif-ferent regions of Taiwan. Even as high school stu-dents in Taiwan who were supposed to have high academic pressures from schools, these subjects spent at least more than 20 h on the Internet per week.
Data collection—interview
The interview was conducted individually by a trained researcher. The interview was conducted in a semi-structured format. The main issues of the in-terview included: the subject’s experiences of using the Internet, what change, in any aspect, after con-tacting the Internet, his or her symptoms and possi-ble sources of Internet addiction, and his or her friends’ and parents’ views about his or her Inter-net addiction. Upon the request of the interview-ees, six of them were interviewed on-line, while the rest of them were interviewed face to face.
RESULTS
Adolescents’ interview results are summarized as follows. First, most of the interviewed adolescents (eight among the 10) exhibited almost all of the symptoms and related problems of Internet addic-tion as identified by IAST.5,13 IAST revealed that “Tolerance” as well as “Compulsive Use and With-drawal” were major factors for the symptoms of pathological Internet use. Meanwhile, Internet ad-dicts encountered related problems about family, school, and health, as well as about interpersonal and finance. The IAST factor structure resembled the diagnoses of compulsive gambling referenced in the DSM-IV by American Psychiatric Associa-tion.15This finding is consistent with the framework proposed recently by psychologists.16The interview data gathered in the study reconfirmed the existence of the aforementioned symptoms and problems. For example, the Internet addiction adolescents showed compulsive use of the Internet, even though they actually did nothing but “hang around” on the In-ternet. They showed an uncontrollable urge to in-crease the amount of time spent on-line and had difficulty decreasing excessive Internet use. One sub-ject stated that “For me, Internet is not a tool; it is a kind of habit or everyday routine.” One student claimed that he once used a regular cell phone to get on-line when taking a train, as he had compul-sive use of the Internet.
Almost all of the interviewed adolescents once tried to withdraw from the Internet but then felt depressed, and the withdrawal was usually not suc-cessful. They found that, in order to fulfill their original satisfaction, their on-line time was increased considerably. Consequently, they often concealed their length of on-line time from their parents. More-over, Internet addiction caused some problems of school, family, health, and finance. That is, their ex-cessive use of the Internet may impair social or per-sonal functions, such as losing sleep and study time, and increasing on-line expenses. One subject claimed that he needed to pay more than $300 (U.S. dollars) for on-line expense. All of the addicts’ parents tried to limit their on-line time or even cut down their use of computer networks at home, and two of the addicts tried to find part-time job (usually related to web technology) to afford the on-line expense.
All of these interviewed adolescents expressed a notable symptom that the use of Internet had caused problems in time management, and that they be-lieved that these problems influenced their academic performance in schools. One subject claimed that he was once on-line for 11 consecutive days
out sleeping. One could imagine how on-line activ-ities influenced his health, school performance, and regular life. However, based on these adolescents’ interview data, Internet addiction did not seem to cause serious problems on their peer interactions (actual, not virtual) in schools. It was also interest-ing to find that all of these adolescents self-reported that their parents were negative toward their Inter-net addiction, but their peers held positive or at least neutral attitudes toward their Internet addic-tion. The use of the Internet or getting on-line was still a fascinating activity for adolescents. One sub-ject even claimed that his peers admired him for breaking family rules and ignoring school discipline. This admiration may have enhanced his confidence that had been damaged when failing to achieve the expectations of teachers and parents.
Moreover, almost all of the interviewed adoles-cents (nine among the 10) stated that messages on the Internet became the dominant source of their information and knowledge. It is recognized that the world of the Internet provides rich information for users, but not all of the information is correct or appropriate for adolescents. Educators as well as parents should note this and advise adolescents to properly deal with the information delivered on the Internet. Also, these adolescents were addicted to various modes of Internet use. Six of these adoles-cents were addicted to the BBS (Bulletin Board Sys-tem, an important application of using the Internet in Taiwan); two of them were addicted by on-line role-play games; two were on-line talk (e.g., icq) addicts; one was a www addict; and still one was addicted by ftp. The www addict heavily viewed web pages, while the ftp addict unmanageably downloaded files for unclear purposes. (Note: Two of them claimed more than one mode of using the Internet caused addiction.) An important research question for psychologists and educators is to ex-plore whether the message and activity on the Inter-net or the medium of the InterInter-net per se is the major cause contributing to adolescents’ Internet addiction. Contemporary psychologists have a sim-ilar distinction for pathological Internet use (PIU), including specific PIU and generalized PIU.6 Spe-cific PIU indicates the condition in which an indi-vidual has pathological use of the Internet for particular purpose, such as online gambling or on-line sex,17whereas generalized PIU refers to a more global set of behaviors. The specific PIU may mainly come from the message and activity on the Internet, while the generalized PIU may possibly stem from the unique features of the Internet as a medium per se. According to the interview data in
this study, six of the students were clearly the spe-cific PIU (e.g., on-line games) users, and two of them were more oriented to generalized PIU (e.g., simply navigating web sites and downloading all kinds of files without any particular purpose).
Six of the interviewed adolescents said that, if they were moody or felt depressed, they would get on the Internet to remedy their depression. They tried to talk to someone on-line, play on-line games, or do “something crazy” on the Internet (e.g., kill peo-ple in games, post deceptive messages). The world of the Internet seemed to become a place to relieve adolescents’ depression. Many of these adolescents (five of them) claimed that the Internet enlarged their social life by introducing them to more people (on the Internet). Finally, eight of the adolescents self-recognized that they were Internet addicts, but none of them could clearly state what to do with such an addiction. Psychologists and educators should pay more attention to this and propose possible so-lutions for adolescents.
CONCLUSION
Currently, Internet addiction is an important issue for psychologists and educators. Adolescents, who are often frequent Internet users but have not yet de-veloped high mental maturity, are viewed as a group of potential Internet addicts. This study described an initial attempt to explore adolescents’ Internet addic-tion through interviews. Adolescents’ interview re-sponses revealed symptoms of Internet addiction similar to those revealed by college students and adults.7–10Many of the adolescents in this study were addicted by the messages and activity on the Internet, but not by the Internet as a medium per se. The world of the Internet became the principal information source and place of relief for these adolescents. When adolescents become a major population of Internet users, more research is required to explore the causes and solutions of adolescents’ Internet addiction.
There are some recommendations for future re-search derived from this study. First, rere-searchers can interview a much larger group of adolescents to ob-tain more information and research insights about adolescents’ Internet addiction. Also, researchers can interview Internet addicts’ parents and their peers to explore how Internet addiction may influence the addicts’ life in different aspects. In addition to interviews, researchers can conduct in-depth obser-vations and collect more on-line activities related to the Internet addicts. As the sample in this study only
involved a group of Taiwanese adolescents show-ing Internet addiction, researchers may interview a similar group of adolescents in other countries. Some cultural differences in Internet addiction may be re-vealed in such cross-cultural research.
Many subjects in this study were interviewed on-line. Based on the authors’ experiences, these adoles-cents felt it was easy to freely express their thoughts in the Internet environment. These subjects were used to talking on the Internet; therefore, for this particular topic (i.e., Internet addiction), the on-line interview is adequate for research data gathering, and perhaps, it is even better than face-to-face in-terviews. The on-line interview can be conducted without the limitations of time and locations, and it can easily record each interviewee’s responses in digital format. Recent research about college stu-dents’ Internet addiction has begun to utilize this approach for interview data gathering.18It is hoped that the findings of this study will stimulate more research and in-depth explorations into adolescents’ Internet addiction.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
We would like to thank the National Science Council of Taiwan, ROC, for financially supporting this research under contract nos. NSC 89–2520-S-009–010 and NSC 89–2511-S-009–007-N.
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