Internet addiction (IA) is prevalent and associated with negative measures of health functioning, with males appearing more vulnerable than females. However, little is known about gender-related differences in the effect sizes of IA globally. This multinational meta-analysis addresses this gap in knowledge by providing estimates of effect sizes of gender-related differences in IA tendencies across jurisdictions and how they relate to global national indexes including gross domestic product (GDP) per capita, internet penetration, gender-related gaps in economies, internet penetration, alcohol consumption, smoking prevalence, life satisfaction and suicide rates. One-hundred-and-one studies consisting of 115 independent samples involving 204,352 participants from 34 countries/regions were identified. The average effect size of gender-related differences in IA in a random-effects model was small at g = 0.145. The highest gender-related effect sizes were in Asia with g = 0.208, and the lowest were in the North America with g = −۰٫۰۴۹, Africa with g = 0.092 and Europe with g = 0.114. Metaregression revealed that smaller effect sizes were observed in nations with greater GDP per capita and higher internet penetration. As operationalized, both the internet availability and social norms hypotheses were supported by effect sizes being positively related to gender-related differences in economic measures, internet penetration, smoking prevalence and alcohol consumption. The Psychological Well-being hypothesis was largely not supported, since the effect sizes were unrelated to gender-related differences in life satisfaction and negatively related to gender-related differences in suicide rates. Findings suggest economic factors, internet availability, social norms and some addiction-related health factors may relate importantly to gender-related differences in IA tendencies across countries.

Introduction

Internet addiction (IA) is characterized by excessive or poorly-controlled preoccupations, urges or behaviors regarding internet use that lead to impairment or distress (Shaw & Black, 2008). IA is associated with suicidality even after adjusting for potential confounding variables including depression (Cheng et al., 2018). Such information dovetails with ongoing efforts of the WHO to promote public health and prevent internet-use-related harms and disorders, including with respect to the inclusion of hazardous gaming and gaming disorder in the eleventh edition of the International Classification of Diseases (ICD-11) (King et al., 2018; Potenza, 2018; Rumpf et al., 2018). IA is a clinically relevant phenomenon that may affect both women and men (Anderson, Steen, & Stavropoulos, 2017; Liang, Zhou, Yuan, Shao, & Bian, 2016). The global prevalence of IA was estimated to be 6.0% (95% CI: 5.1–۶٫۹) according to a meta-analysis from 31 countries spanning multiple global regions (Cheng et al., 2014). Despite multiple publications suggesting that males have higher prevalence estimates of IA (Mei, Yau, Chai, Guo, & Potenza, 2016; Tsitsika et al., 2014), relatively little is known regarding gender-related differences at a global level and gender-specific relationships with other measures across nations.