Digital Addiction Intervention for Children and Adolescents: A Scoping Review

Abstract

Digital devices play a significant role in the learning and living of children and adolescents, whose overuse or addiction has become a global concern. This scoping review seeks to synthesize existing studies to investigate relevant interventions and their effects on digital addiction in children (ages 0–18). To understand the latest advances, we have identified 17 studies published in international peer-reviewed journals between 2018–2022. The findings revealed that, first, most interventions for digital addiction in children and adolescents were cognitive–behavioral therapies (CBT) or CBT-based interventions, which could improve anxiety, depression, and related symptoms of digital addiction. Second, rather than directly targeting addictive behaviors, some family-based interventions aim to strengthen family functions and relationships. Finally, digital-based interventions, such as website-based, application-based, and virtual reality interventions, are promising in adolescent digital addiction interventions. However, these studies shared the same limitations: small sample sizes, short intervention durations, no control group, and nonrandomized assignments. The small sample size problem is difficult to solve by offline intervention. Meanwhile, online digital-based intervention is still in its infancy, resulting in limited generalizability of the findings and the inability to popularize digital intervention. Accordingly, future intervention studies should integrate various assessments and interventions to form an integrated platform to provide interventions for addicted children and adolescents worldwide.

e- Health for Fighting Digital Addiction: a Literature Review

“…E-health can be applied in various stages of human development. Digital based intervention is a promising alterative intervention for adolescents with digital addiction (Ding & Li, 2023). Not only in adolescents, e health interventions can also be applied to children starting at the age of 11 years (Akgül-Gündogdu & Selçuk-Tosun, 2023) and adults aged 18 years and over (Keller et al, 2021).…”

“…Digital addiction occurs in various age groups. Child and adolescent tend to became addicted to electronical devices, online game and social media (Ding & Li, 2023), (Putra et al, 2023), (Macur & Pontes, 2021), (Baciu, 2020). 19-24 years old was population with a great number problem gamers (André et al, 2020).…”

Online Addiction: A New Form of Mental Health Issue

“…Participating in offline activities represents an additional strategy for mitigating the risk of developing online addiction (59,60). Engaging in extracurricular pursuits, such as volunteering, arts and crafts, or athletics, can assist individuals in shifting their attention from the digital realm and fostering fresh passions and interests.…”

Effects of active video games on physical activity among overweight and obese college students: a systematic review

“…Many factors contribute to overweight and obesity such as diet, genetics and environment ( 6 ). However, with the advancement of technology, people are becoming more connected to digital devices, their lifestyles are gradually moving from offline to online and they spend a lot of time in the digital world every day ( 7 , 8 ). Many studies have shown that over-reliance on digital (e.g., use of mobile phones, tablets, and computers) has become a new way of becoming overweight and obese ( 9 , 10 ).…”