Journal of Addiction Research & Therapy
Open Access

Research Article

Problematic Internet use in Older Adults, A Critical Review of the Literature

¹Department of Mental Health and Psychiatry, University Hospitals of Geneva, Switzerland

²Psychiatric Emergency Division ,Department of Primary care and Community Medicine, University Hospitals of Geneva, Switzerland

³Addiction Division, Department of Mental Health and Psychiatry, University Hospitals of Geneva, Switzerland

⁴Speciality Division, Department of Mental Health and Psychiatry, University Hospitals of Geneva, Switzerland

Corresponding Author:

Achab S
Specialized Program in Behavioural addictions
Addiction Division
Department of Mental Health and Psychiatry
University Hospitals of Geneva, Switzerland
Tel: 0041 22 372 57 50
Fax: 0041 22 372 57 54
E-mail: sophia.achab@hcuge.ch

Received date: July 13, 2015 Accepted date: December 22, 2015 Published date: December 31, 2015

Citation: M’hiri K, Costanza A, Khazaal Y, Khan R, Zullino D, et al. (2015) Problematic Internet use in Older Adults, A Critical Review of the Literature . J Addict Res Ther 6:253. doi:10.4172/2155-6105.1000253

Copyright: © 2015 M’hiri K, et al. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.

Lately, the use of Internet has become increasingly common and is source of benefits in terms of information, communication and health applications. Its use is, sometimes, problematic with psychiatric and physical negative consequences. Growing literature provides data on adolescents and adults. Entry into advanced age and characteristics involve interaction with Internet, different from that of the adult or young adult.
This paper aimed to review literature on problematic Internet use in elder persons. Literature search on Medline database has shown no study on problematic Internet use targeting subjects aged over 60 years old. Only 3 studies including subjects entering into elder age (over 55 years old) have been found. They showed Problematic Internet use (PIU) being present in this subgroup population but no further data were presented specifically for this age group.
Why problematic Internet use in elderly should be a concern for the medical community at a neurological, social, somatic and psychiatric level is discussed in the present article.
Further research is needed to screen for problematic use of Internet in this population and to characterize it. The expected outcome of this research to be developed is to design specific therapeutic and preventive strategies

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