Internet Addiction Test (IAT)

Front Cover
Stoelting, Dec 1, 2016 - Self-Help - 32 pages

 While the Internet is a relatively new technology, that has impacted the world, and provided many benefits, it has also had negative ramifications.  Individuals unable to control their use are jeopardizing school, employment and relationships.  The concept of “Internet Addiction” is used to explain uncontrollable, damaging use of technology.  It is characterized as an impulse control disorder, comparable to pathological gambling, because of overlapping diagnostic criteria and symptomatology.

Based on these studies, the IAT was constructed to capture the problematic behavior associated with compulsive use of technology, including online porn, internet gambling and compulsive use of online games and social media.

The Internet Addiction Test emerged as the first validated measure of Internet and technology addiction. The assessments can be administered in a variety of mental health settings, including private practice clinics, schools, hospitals and residential programs.  They can be used when there is suspicion of Internet addiction, as part of a broad intake assessment, or for use in a wellness curriculum to help participants evaluate their own Internet behavior.  The IAT can also be a valuable pre-employment screening device, to detect internet addiction among job candidates, to improve productivity and reduce corporate liability.

Based on 20 self-report items, the IAT assesses for the presence of addiction to the Internet, electronic entertainment, social media, and general use of electronic devices, and also measures the severity of addiction, in terms of mild, moderate or severe.  Furthermore, because Internet addiction may be driven by different reasons and manifest in different ways, requiring different types of treatment, the IAT produces scores related to the following areas:

EscapeCompulsionNeglecting dutiesAnticipationLack of ControlSocial Avoidance
 

Common terms and phrases

About the author (2016)

Dr. Kimberly Young is a licensed psychologist and an internationally known expert on Internet addiction. She founded the Center for Internet Addiction in 1995, is a professor at St. Bonaventure University, and has published numerous articles and books, including Caught in the Net, the first to identify Internet addiction, Tangled in the Web, Internet Addiction: A Handbook and Guide for Evaluation and Treatment, and her most recent, Internet Addiction in Children and Adolescents: Risk Factors, Treatment, and Prevention. Her work has been featured in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, The London Times, USA Today, Newsweek, Time, CNN, CBS News, Fox News, Good Morning America, and ABC’s World News Tonight. She has received the Psychology in the Media Award from the Pennsylvania Psychological Association and the Alumni Ambassador Award for Outstanding Achievement from Indiana University at Pennsylvania. She serves on the advisory board for The Internet Group in Toronto and the Japanese Ministry for the prevention and treatment of Internet Addiction.

 

Dr. Young has testified for the Child Online Protection Act Congressional Committee and she has been a keynote speaker at the European Union of Health and Medicine, the International Conference on Digital Culture in Seoul, Korea, the US Army War College in Pennsylvania, and the First International Congress on Internet Addiction Disorders in Milan, Italy, and served on the National Academy of Sciences for the Digital Media and Developing Minds colloquia.

 

She is on the editorial board of the Journal of Behaviorial Addictions, the American Journal of Family Therapy, Addicta: The Turkish Journal of Addiction, the International Journal of Cyber Crime and Criminal Justice, and on the advisory board of CyberPsychology: Journal for Psychosocial Research on Cyberspace, and a member of the American Psychological Association.