2. Abstract
Internet usage has seen a stark global rise over the last few decades, particularly among adolescents and young people, who have also been diagnosed increasingly with Internet Addiction. Internet Addiction impacts several neural networks that influence an adolescent’s behaviour and development.
This article issued a literature review on the resting-state and task-based functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) studies to inspect the consequences of Internet Addiction on the functional connectivity in the adolescent brain and its subsequent effects on their behaviour and development.
A systematic search was conducted from two databases, PubMed and PsycINFO, to select eligible articles according to the inclusion and exclusion criteria. Eligibility criteria was especially stringent regarding the adolescent age range (10-19) and formal diagnosis of Internet Addiction. Bias and quality of individual studies were evaluated.
The fMRI results from 12 articles demonstrated that the effects of Internet Addiction were seen throughout multiple neural networks:
▪ a mix of increases/decreases in functional connectivity in the default mode network;
▪ an overall decrease in functional connectivity in the executive control network;
▪ and no clear increase or decrease in functional connectivity within the salience network and reward pathway.
The functional connectivity changes led to addictive behaviour and tendencies in adolescents. The subsequent behavioural changes are associated with the mechanisms relating to the areas of cognitive control, reward valuation, motor coordination, and the developing adolescent brain.
Our results presented the functional connectivity alterations in numerous brain regions of adolescents with internet addiction leading to the behavioural and developmental changes. Research on this topic had a low frequency with adolescent samples and were primarily produced in Asian countries. Future research studies of comparing results from Western adolescent samples provide more insight on therapeutic intervention.