This cross-sectional study aimed to explore specific online behaviours and their association with a range of underlying psychological and other behavioural factors during the COVID-19 pandemic. Eight countries (Italy, Spain, the United Kingdom, Lithuania, Portugal, Japan, Hungary, and Brazil) participated in an international investigation involving 2223 participants (M = 33 years old; SD = 11), 70% of whom were females. Participants were surveyed for specific type of Internet use severity, appearance anxiety, self-compassion, and image and use of performance-enhancing drugs (IPEDs). Results were compared cross-culturally. The mean time spent online was 5 h (SD = ±3) of daily browsing during the pandemic. The most commonly performed activities included social networking, streaming, and general surfing. A strong association between these online behaviours and appearance anxiety, self-compassion, and IPEDs use was found after adjustment for possible confounders, with higher scores being associated with specific online activities. Significant cross-cultural differences also emerged in terms of the amount of time spent online during the initial stages of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Alexithymia is widely recognized as the inability to identify and express emotions. It is a construct which consists of four cognitive traits such as difficulty in identifying feelings, describing feelings to others, externally oriented thinking, and limited imaginative capacity. Several studies have linked alexithymia to cognitive functioning, observing greater alexithymia scores associated with poorer cognitive abilities. Despite Alzheimer’s disease (AD) being a neurodegenerative pathology characterized by cognitive troubles from the early stages, associated to behavioral and emotional disturbances, very few investigations have studied the alexithymia in AD. These studies have shown that alexithymia scores—assessed with Toronto Alexithymia Scale (TAS)—were greater in AD patients than healthy participants. The objective of the study was to investigate if the alexithymia was present in patients with mild AD. We hypothesized that the AD group would show more alexithymia features than the control group. We evaluated 54 subjects, including 27 patients diagnosed with mild AD and 27 normal healthy controls, using the Shalling Sifneos Psychosomatic Scale (SSPS-R) and a neuropsychological test battery. Using non-parametric statistical analyses—Wilcoxon and Mann–Whitney U tests—we observed that the SSPS-R scores were similar in the AD and control groups. All participants showed SSPS-R scores below to 10 points, which means no-alexithymia. We did not find significant correlations between SSPS-R scores and cognitive variables in both groups (p > 0.22), but we observed a negative association between name abilities and alexithymia, but it does not reach to significance (p = 0.07). However, a significant correlation between SSPS-R score and mood state, assessed using Zerssen Rating Scale, was found in both groups (p = 0.01). Because we did not find a significant difference in the alexithymia assessment between both subject groups, pot hoc analyses were computed for each item of the SSPS-R. We made comparisons of alexithymic responses percentages in each SSPS-R item between AD and control groups, using Fisher’s test. We observed that AD patients produced more alexithymic responses in some items of SSPS-R test than the control group, particularly about difficulties to find the words to describe feelings, as well as difficulties of imagination capacity and externally oriented thinking. The present results do not confirm our hypothesis and they do not support the results of previous studies revealing great alexithymia in AD.