A meta-analysis of the relationships between psychosocial problems and internet habits: Synthesizing internet addiction, problematic internet use, and deficient self-regulation research

Losses of self-control over Internet use, indicative of Internet habits, have caught the attention of the public for some time. A large collection of studies that theorize about and test the associations between psychosocial problems and Internet habits has been amassed over the last two decades. A meta-analytic review was used to determine the average correlations of Internet habits with loneliness and depression in existing research and explore several conditions under which these effects may vary. The cumulative correlations revealed that loneliness and depression were independently associated with Internet habits across the studies. Although the relationship between loneliness and Internet habits was stable across a number of different conditions, the depression-Internet habit association varied with age groups, year of publication, and sample types.