Abstract
Objectives: the aim of the study was description of the association between the number of hours spent on the internet and symptom- atology of Internet addiction, corrected by sociodemographic data, mental instability, alcohol and cannabis use, gambling, and subjective estimation of physical and mental health using responses from a representative sample of Czech respondents during COVID-19 pandemic. Sample and setting: The group consisted of 2 602 people (1 206 men, 1 396 women), average age 44,61 years, SD = 15,8223, range 15-85 years randomly selected by quota selection based on age, gender, education and region.
Data were processed by hierarchical mul- tivariate linear regression analysis (OLS). The dependent variable was data from the Excessive Internet Use test.
Independent variables were age, gender, net income, marital status, education, subjective estimation of mental and physical health, data from MHI-5, CAGE, cast and PGsi tools. Results: the results are in line with previous research, which indicates that the development of internet addiction is mainly due to time spent on the Internet, the risk is inversely related to age and slightly higher in men.
The influence of other variables measur- ing substance use, gambling and mental health supports hypotheses about common etiology of various types of addiction and their association with mental health. Study limitation: the study is based on self-referential data, has a heuristic, empirical character and does not rely on a pre-formulated theory.