L’objectif de notre travail était d’évaluer la fréquence de la cyberaddiction dans une population d’étudiants et de relever leurs principaux facteurs de risque.

Nous avons mené une étude transversale, descriptive et comparative auprès d’une population d’étudiants de la faculté des sciences d’El Manar. La population était constituée de 310 étudiants. Nous avons recueilli les données sociodémographiques et cliniques par l’intermédiaire d’un auto-questionnaire semi-structuré. Nous avons utilisé le MINI pour dépister la dépression, l’échelle d’anxiété de Beck et le questionnaire de Young de la cyberdépendance.

Un peu plus d’un quart des étudiants présentait une cyberaddiction (26,8 %). Les facteurs corrélés à la cyberaddiction étaient l’âge, le lieu d’habitation, le parcours scolaire, les antécédents, la dépression, l’anxiété et la consommation d’alcool et de cannabis.

Notre étude est en faveur de la fréquence de la cyberaddiction parmi les étudiants enquêtés.

In this study, our aims were to find the cyberaddiction's prevalence among student's sample of Tunis scientific university and to seek for the most important cyberaddiction's risk factors.

Our study included 310 students from the scientific university of Tunis El Manar. All students completed a questionnaire. The questionnaire was composed by three parts: the first included the social and demographic data, the second included personnel and familiar data. We used the MINI to detect depressive symptoms during the last two weeks. We used the Beck anxiety scale to detect anxiety symptoms during the last week. Finally we used the Young cyberaddiction scale to seek for cyberdependency.

The sample was composed by 57.4% girls (n=178) and 42.6% boys (n=132), the sex-ratio F/H was 1.34. Mean age was 21.9 years±1.4. A total of 27.7% (n=86) of students have a major depressive episode during the two last weeks (MINI criteria's). While, meanly the half of students (53.5%, n=166) have anxiety symptoms (Beck anxiety scale). A total of 19.7% of students (n=61) present an alcohol use (19.7%, n=61). Eight students use occasionally cannabis (2.6%). A total of 26.8%; n=83 of students are addicted to Internet, if Young internet addiction criteria's was applied. All the students use frequently Internet. The most of them all days (82.3%, n=255). The connexion mean time was 3.8±2hours/day. The most frequent activities on the net were the chat (online discussion, forums…) in 79.1% of cases. Meanly 25% of students of the sample have three activities on the net (chat, founding, save, games on line…). The age (P<0.001), the residence (P=0.017) and the scholar failure (P<0.001) were correlated to the cyberdependency (OR=2.8; 2.3 and 2.8, respectively). Family history was also correlated to cyberaddiction (P=0.023). We also note most depression, anxiety symptoms, and alcohol and cannabis addictions among group of cyberaddicted students. The relative risk was estimated respectively to 4.6; 4.4; 3.2 and 8.5.

The cyberdependency was frequent among students. Depressive and anxiety symptoms were also important in case of net addiction. It is important to detect and prevent this cyberaddiction and those psychiatric comorbidities.