The Conceptualisation of Internet Addiction: A Critical Review of Overlapping Terminologies and Diagnostic Scope

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DOI: https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.21868278

Vimanshi Solanki (Department of Psychology, Lady Shri Ram College for Women, University of Delhi, Delhi)

This paper reviews the existing literature in to shed light on the conceptualisations of internet addiction with its often related terminologies like excessive internet use, compulsive internet use, problematic internet use, internet dependence, gaming addiction, pathological internet use, etc. This paper further identifies the various measurement scales used across countries and languages to assess internet addiction and its diverse conceptualisations and terminology. Further, the challenges due to the lack of uniform diagnostic criteria of internet addiction as a disorder are also discussed. Nowadays, due to the inevitability of internet use for daily living, there is an urgent need for widely accepted and relevant terminology to redefine the internet use, not only as a medium but underlying processes or functions and their related outcomes, across age groups and genders. Further, developing revised measurement scales to identify healthy internet use and unhealthy internet use behaviours for future research.