Estimation of Behavioral Addiction Prevalence During COVID-19 Pandemic: A Systematic Review and Meta-analysis

AbstractPurpose of ReviewThe COVID-19 pandemic changed people ’s lifestyles and such changed lifestyles included the potential of increasing addictive behaviors. The present systematic review and meta-analysis aimed to estimate the prevalence of different behavioral addictions (i.e., internet addiction, smartphone addiction, gaming addiction, social media ad diction, food addiction, exercise addiction, gambling addiction, and shopping addiction) both overall and separately.Recent FindingsFour databases (PubMed,Scopus, ISI Web of Knowledge, andProQuest) were searched. Peer-reviewed papers published in English between December 2019 and July 2022 were reviewed and analyzed. Search terms were selected using PECO-S criteria: population (no limitation in participants ’ characteristics), exposure (COVID-19 pandemic), comparison (healthy populations), outcome (frequency or prevalence of behavioral addiction), and study design (observational study). A total of 94 studies with 237,657 participants from 40 different countries (mean age 25.02 years; 57.41% females) . The overall prevalence of behavioral addiction irrespective of addiction type (after correcting for publication bias) was 11.1% (95%CI: 5.4 to 16.8%). The prevalence rates for each separate behavioral addiction (after correcting for publication bias) were 10.6% for internet addiction, 30.7% for smartphone addiction, 5.3% for gaming addiction, 15.1% for social media addiction, 21% for food addiction, 9.4% for sex addicti...
Source: Current Addiction Reports - Category: Addiction Source Type: research