One in five Korean teens faces online addiction

“If I let my son take a break from studying, he immediately starts watching short-form videos,” said Lee, a 43-year-old parent of a fifth grader in Goyang, Gyeonggi Province. “He scrolls nonstop with his thumb and can spend up to an hour glued to the screen if I don’t intervene.”

Like Lee’s son, about one in five South Korean youths is excessively dependent on the internet and smartphones, disrupting daily life. The number of students showing severe addiction symptoms and requiring professional help is rising.

A nationwide survey conducted by the Ministry of Gender Equality and Family from April through early June found that 213,243 out of 1.23 million elementary, middle, and high school students, or 17.3 percent, were classified as at risk of online overdependence. Last year, the figure was slightly higher at 17.7 percent among 1.24 million surveyed students. Since 2009, the ministry has conducted this annual survey to identify youths struggling with internet and smartphone addiction and provide targeted support.

The number of students needing professional help for severe addiction has increased. The risk group is divided into two categories: high-risk users, who require treatment, and caution users, who need monitoring. The high-risk category has grown, with internet high-risk users rising from 16,490 in 2023 and 17,305 in 2024 to 17,525 this year. Smartphone high-risk users also climbed from 14,766 in 2023 and 14,408 last year to 14,815 in 2025.

Experts say the increase in severe addiction cases is partly due to the rapid rise of short-form video content. Unlike long-form videos that demand sustained focus, short-form videos deliver quick, often fragmented, and highly stimulating information, making them more addictive. "Young people are more vulnerable to short-form content addiction than adults. He added that avoiding longer videos may shorten attention spans," said Lee Tae-yeop, a professor of child and adolescent psychiatry at Seoul Asan Medical Center.

By school level, middle school students accounted for the largest number of online overdependence cases at 85,487, followed by high school students at 70,527 and elementary students at 57,229. More male youths (116,414) than female youths (96,829) were classified in the risk groups.


방성은 기자 bbang@donga.com