The Relationship Between Internet-use Behavior and Mental Health in Youth

Introduction: WHO defines youth as 15-24 years age group. At this stage, the brain is still under development, with high impulsiveness, being fond of stimulation and yearning for peer life. Compared with traditional interpersonal interaction, modern youths use the Internet as a main interpersonal interaction platform and conduct lots of leisure activities on the Internet. Poor cognitive emotion regulation strategies and personal traits may extend to new types of mental health issues; and are associated with depression, anxiety, suicidal/self-injurious behaviors, and cyberbullying.

Objectives: (1) To investigate whether emotion regulation strategies while facing stressful events are highly related to with cyberbullying, social media, and internet gaming disorder. (2) To investigate the relation between cyberbullying and depression, anxiety, suicide/self-injury among Taiwanese youths. (3) To investigate the probability of cyberbullying, social media addiction, and internet gaming disorder occurring at the same time.

Method: This cross-sectional study recruits cases of youths from 15 to 24 years old and collects data through questionnaires survey. In addition to collection of basic data, Internet using habits, and medical history, self-rated questionnaires include Suicide/Self-Injury Ideation Questionnaire, The Beck Depression Inventory 2nd Edition, Multidimensional Anxiety Scale for Children-Taiwan version, Cognitive Emotion Regulation Questionnaire, Cyberbullying Questionnaire, and Internet Gaming Disorder Scale-Short Form.