Meta-analysis is when scientists put together many different studies that have been done before and analyze the result.
To understand what addictions men and women develop when using the Internet, the researchers looked at 53 studies on play disorder. They included over 82,000 people from 21 countries and 41 social media addiction surveys conducted in 22 regions and over 58,000 people. The studies were conducted from January 2010 to August 2018.
There are many scientific works on this topic, the problem is widespread and acute. As of 2014, 6% of the world's population is addicted to the internet (based on a meta-analysis of 31 countries, Cheng & Li, 2014). Moreover, about 60% of the world's population has the Internet itself (although in 14 it was probably less).
Determining the terms
Play disorder
Gambling disorder is the constant and regular use of the Internet to participate in games, usually with other players, which results in deterioration or clinically significant stress.
Social media addiction
Failure to regulate the use of social media that leads to negative outcomes.
Hypotheses
The study tests two hypotheses:
- Men are more prone to gambling disorder, while women are more prone to social media addiction.
- Generalized internet addiction masks gender-based differences.
Data quality
In general, most of the research is devoted to data quality. I will not give all the calculations here, but at the end I will give a link to the original article, where you can check everything yourself:
- , .
- .
- 1 4. . — 1 , — 1 , — 1 .
- ( 10 ). 2 4,4.
The magnitude of the positive effect reflects the greater likelihood for men compared to women. That is, if the effect is positive, then men do it on average more. If negative, less on average.
In 12 countries out of 16, there are typical gender differences with a predominance of games for men, and social status for women. Germany and Taiwan are different: there men stick strongly to both games and friends' feed.
An unusual situation in India: there women suffer more from gambling addiction, and men cannot get out of social networks.
But could it be that some gender is generally more addicted and this masks the effect of social media or gaming? Scientists have assessed the effect of gender on general Internet addiction and compared them with addictions to games and social networks.
IA - Internet Addiction; IGD - gambling addiction; SMA - Social Media Addiction.
The red line, which denotes Internet addiction, goes around zero, which means that there is probably no special gender effect. Green social networks are going negative, which means that there are far fewer men than one would expect under a normal distribution. Yellow gambling addiction is a plus, which means that there are, on average, more men there.
Conclusions and analysis
The initial hypothesis was confirmed. Internet addiction in people manifests itself in different ways: "boys" play with toys, "girls" stick to social networks.
This pattern persists across different locations and cultures. In Europe and North America, gender is most pronounced, in Asia it is less.
There are several hypotheses why this is happening:
- , . , — , , — . , , , — .
- , , - ( MMORPG, ).
Why India, Germany and Taiwan are so different from everyone else is not clear. But it is unlikely that there will be fewer Internet addicts in the near future, which means there will be new studies. Maybe after them something will become clear.
Do men become addicted to internet gaming and women to social media? A meta-analysis examining gender-related differences in specific internet addiction Wenliang Su, Xiaoli Han, Hanlu Yu, Yiling Wu, Marc N. Potenza
Dealing with your gender-based or non-gender-based Internet addiction
It's not accurate, but there is a small study of 500 people that showed guys with screen time limiting apps were happier in life.
Research reviews on other topics
→ Copywriting and design of charity plates. Research Review
→ Is Beautiful More Convenient than Ugly? Research overview