Internet-Based Intervention for the Treatment of Online Addiction for College Students in China: A Pilot Study of the Healthy Online Self-Helping Center

Abstract

Internet addiction among college students has become a serious problem in China. This pilot study involved the development of an online expert system named Healthy Online Self-helping Center (HOSC) as an intervention tool to help those who wish to reduce online usage. The study also explored the effectiveness of HOSC for college students' Internet addiction behavior. Participants (N = 65) were recruited from a university in Beijing, and were randomly assigned to one of four conditions: using HOSC within a laboratory environment, using HOSC within a natural environment, using a noninteractive program, and a control group. All the participants were asked to answer questionnaires at the baseline and at the 1-month follow-up. The questionnaires included the participants' online hours per week, the legitimate ratio of Internet usage, online satisfaction, and the Young's Diagnostic Questionnaire. The results revealed that HOSC under both natural and laboratory environments could effectively reduce the participants' online hours per week as well as their Young's Diagnostic Questionnaire score, and improve online satisfaction at a 1-month follow-up. Participants using a noninteractive program also had similar results. The article concludes with a discussion of the limitations of the study, as well as the implications of the findings and future research directions.

The Influence of Personality, Parental Behaviors, and Self-Esteem on Internet Addiction: A Study of Chinese College Students

“…The higher the total score, the higher the Internet addiction. The scale has been utilized in previous studies with Chinese participants, 27,30 and yielded satisfactory reliability (a = 0.70). 30 Parenting behavior.…”

“…The scale has been utilized in previous studies with Chinese participants, 27,30 and yielded satisfactory reliability (a = 0.70). 30 Parenting behavior. A short form of the Egna Minnenav Barndoms Uppfostran (EMBU) was used to assess parenting behavior.…”

Video Game Addiction: Past, Present and Future

“…Only three of the seven studies [50,105,106] clearly stated the extent to which problem video gaming was a symptom or component of the Internet addiction. Only two studies [107,108] reported treatment effect sizes. Therefore, the clinical significance of treatment outcomes of published treatment studies is somewhat unclear.…”

Internet Addiction

“…When Internet use arises as part of another addiction, the clinical approach focuses on that domain (see chapters VII-3, VII-6, VII-8). There has also been an emergence of Internet-based therapeutic programs (Su et al 2011). These can be a suitable gateway to care for intensive electronic media users (Zematten et al 2010).…”