A recent study conducted by scientists from Xidian University in China and several other medical research institutes in China and the U.S., published through PLoS One, a peer-reviewed scientific journal, has concluded that long-term internet addiction, especially during the formative years of adolescence, may produce an altered brain structure.
The study describes rising instances of Internet Addiction Disorder (IAD) among adolescent youth throughout the world, most prevalently in China where the addiction rate among urban youth is approximately 14 percent, or 24 million kids.
The study links IAD with “impairment of [an] individual’s psychological well-being, academic failure and reduced word performance,” stating that although not universally accepted as a medical phenomenon, “IAD is growing in prevalence and has attracted the attention of psychiatrists, educators, and the public.”
According to the article, other studies have shown other indicating factors, for example that the crave for online gaming and the crave for highly addictive and dependent chemical substances, like opiates, may “share the same neurobiological mechanisms,” that adolescents with IAD are more impulsive than those without, and that IAD test subjects processed information less effectively.
The study itself was conducted by selecting 18 college-aged healthy controls without IAD and 18 equally-aged and gendered students that were determined to have IAD based on their answering of a modified 8 question version of the Young Diagnostic Questionnaire for Internet addiction developed by Dr. Kimberly Young, a psychiatrist and professor at St. Bonaventure University who founded the Center for Internet Addiction in 1995.
Each of the test subjects spent up to 10 or more hours per day at least 6 days a week playing online games. Information about the lifestyles and intensity of addiction in each test subject was further verified by conversations and interviews with friends, peers, and family.
The test involved scanning the brain of each of the test subjects for gray matter, neural tissue on the surface of the brain and in the spinal cord which directs sensory input, and white matter, neural tissue made from nerve fiber which connects the gray matter and allows different parts of gray matter to communicate with the rest of the body.
The results show that “gray matter volumes … showed a negative correlation with months of internet addiction,” asserting that “no brain regions [in IAD subjects] showed higher gray matter volume than healthy controls.”
With white matter, the test showed that subjects with IAD had higher concentrations of it in certain parts of the brain and lower concentrations in other parts when compared to the healthy control group.
The study conclusively states that “our results suggested that long-term internet addiction would result in brain structural alterations, which probably contributed to chronic dysfunction in subjects with IAD.”
