Study: Teen internet addicts more likely to self harm

According to an Australian-Chinese study, teenagers who are addicted to the internet are more likely to engage in self-harming behavior, Reuters reports. Researchers surveyed 1,618 adolescents ages 13 to 18 from China's Guangdong Province about behavior such as hitting themselves, pulling their own hair, or pinching or burning themselves, and gave them a test to gauge internet addiction. The test found that about 10 percent of the students surveyed were moderately addicted to the internet, while less than one percent were severely addicted. The students ranked as moderately addicted to the internet were 2.4 times more likely to have self-injured one to five times in the past six months than students without an addiction, said Dr. Lawrence Lam from the University of Notre Dame Australia. The moderately-to-severely addicted students were almost five times more likely than non-addicted students to have self-injured six or more times in the past six months. The researchers said their results suggested a "strong and significant" association between internet addiction and self-injury in adolescence--even after accounting for other variables previously associated with the behavior, including depression, family dissatisfaction, or stressful life events...

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