Addiction in Adolescents During COVID-19 Pandemic: A Systematic Review

The COVID-19 pandemic has caused significant problems all over the world for over 1 year, the disease has spread in a short time, and all countries had to take preventions in this direction. As a result of these developments; people had to spend their time at home, physical activity, social life and social interaction have been severely restricted. Fear of illness, losing a close person, limitation of interaction with peers, changes in eating habits and sleep patterns, etc. affected children and adolescents as well as adults and uncertainty of the period have caused an increase in psychological and social problems in this age group. Especially the school closures, maintaining education with online distance education both have decreased the efficiency in education and caused children and adolescents to spend most of their time in the internet. Internet has not been used only for school and lessons, also using for entertainment have caused prolonged exposure to screens. As well as behavioral addictions, substance use in order to cope with difficulties has become a worthy subject to investigate in this period. It is predicted that the ongoing pandemic process will accelerate the studies about addictions in adolescents. In this review, we aimed to take attention to studies on addiction in adolescents during the COVID-19 pandemic.