Anxiety/Depression and Internet Addiction: Directions, Antecedents, and Outcomes

This paper aims to review the existing literature on the relationships between anxiety/depression and Internet addiction and their common risk factors, protective factors, and developmental outcomes.

In the literature, three types of relationships have been revealed between anxiety/depression and Internet addiction, namely, anxiety/depression → Internet addiction, Internet addiction → anxiety/depression, and the bidirectional directions between them. Some personal characteristics such as neuroticism, shyness, low self-esteem, and low self-control and environmental factors such as childhood maltreatment and peer victimization may place individuals at increased risks of anxiety/depression and Internet addiction, but other psychological factors may prevent individuals from this. Anxiety/depression and Internet addiction exert a negative influence on individuals’ development.

Anxiety/depression and Internet addiction have some common risk factors and outcomes and the relationships between them were unidirectional and bidirectional. Longitudinal studies with more time points are needed to examine the relationships between anxiety/depression and Internet addiction.