UNSTRUCTURED
Background: Cyber-addiction has become a particularly serious problem among students around the world. However, few researchers have investigated cyber-addiction and its impact on Tunisian university students. Aims: Our study aimed to assess the presence and severity of internet addiction among Tunisian university students. Methods: 540 students from Sfax, Tunisia (191 males, 35.4% and 349 females, 64.6%) aged from 18 to 30 years, with a mean age of 21.72 ± 1.93 years, participated voluntarily to our study. They were administered the French version of the "Internet Addiction Test" (IAT). Results: Mean IAT score resulted 65.02 ± 19.71 (median 68). Exploratory and confirmatory factor analyses enabled to discover a 1-factor structure. Overall reliability proved excellent, as shown by the Cronbach’s alpha (0.93) and by the test-retest correlation (0.73). Almost half of the students (42.8%) were found to be cyber-addicted, with females being much more affected than males (respectively 30.9% versus 11.9%). Together with gender, age was found to be another determinant of cyber-addiction, with students aged less than 20 years exhibiting a higher risk than students aged 20 years and older. Conclusion: The IAT proved to be a reliable instrument that can be administered to Tunisian students. Moreover, our results showed that cyber-addiction has become a widespread phenomenon also among Tunisian university students.