Healthy lifestyle behaviors encompass activities aimed at promoting, maintaining, or reclaiming health. Evaluating these behaviors accurately requires comp

The aim of this study was to determine the prevalence of internet addiction among university students and its relationships with quality of life, life satisfaction, and depression. This cross-sectional study included 394 students from the Istanbul University-Cerrahpasa faculties of Engineering, Health Sciences, Sport Sciences, and Education. The self-report questionnaires included questions assessing sociodemographic factors, quality of life, life satisfaction, the Chen Internet Addiction Scale, and the Beck Depression Inventory. The prevalence of internet addiction (IA) was 18.3%, and depression was 60.9%. IA was more common among students with severe (OR = 7.10; 95% CI: 2.94–17.10) and moderate (OR = 3.43; 95% CI: 1.56–7.51) depressive symptoms than among those with minimal symptoms. Income less than expenses (OR = 2.03; 95% CI: 1.09–3.78) and reading books less than once per month were positively associated with IA. Reading 1–3 times/month (OR = 0.30; 95% CI: 0.14–0.65) and once/week or more (OR = 0.36; 95% CI: 0.19–0.70) were negatively associated with IA. No significant associations were found between IA and either quality of life or life satisfaction. In this study, depression, low income, and limited reading habits were identified as significantly associated variables for internet addiction. To protect university students from internet addiction and develop healthy behaviors, it is necessary to develop prevention strategies, design, and implement awareness and education programs that consider preventive factors.

Internet addiction; excessive and uncontrolled use of the internet is a global problem that affects different segments of the population at different levels. There are many measurement tools in the literature that assess individuals’ internet addiction. The aim of this study was to analyze the agreement and compare the characteristics and results of the two most commonly used scales developed by Young and Chen to measure internet addiction. This cross-sectional study was conducted between March 2023 and June 2023 among 5th- and 6th-year medical school students. The questionnaire consisted of a section that included questions about the sociodemographic and life characteristics of the students and the Young Internet Addiction Test (IAT) and the Chen Internet Addiction Scale (CIAS-R). The prevalence of Internet addiction in 244 medical students was 15% according to the Young IAT with 50 as the cutoff, 56% according to the Young IAT with 30 as the cutoff and 11% according to the CIAS-R. There was moderate agreement (kappa coefficient: 0.50) between the CIAS-R and Young IAT (50); there was slight agreement (kappa coefficient: 0.17) between the CIAS-R and Young IAT (30). In addition, there was no significant difference between the Young IAT (50) and CIAS-R results. There was a significant, strong correlation (r = 0.81) between the Young IAT (50) and the CIAS-R. Although there was moderate agreement between the Young IAT (50) and CIAS, the agreement between the Young IAT (30) and CIAS-R was poor. This study showed that the Young IAT and CIAS-R, which are most commonly used for determining internet addiction, did not function in as high agreement as expected. We think that the selection of the population to be applied in new scale development studies will contribute to the importance of selecting people with clinical diagnoses and generalizable to the society.