The impact of Internet access on household dietary quality:Evidence from rural China

Over the past few decades,the Internet has rapidly diffused across China.The spread of the Internet has had a profound economic and social impact on Chinese rural areas.Existing research shows that Internet access significantly impacts agricultural production and improves smallholder farmers’income.Beyond these,the Internet can affect other dimensions of social welfare.However,research about the impact of Internet access on dietary quality in rural China remains scarce.This study utilizes multi-period panel data from Fixed Observation Point in rural China from 2009 to 2015 to estimate the impact of Internet access on dietary quality and food consumption of rural households and conducts a causal analysis.Regression models with time and household fixed effects allow robust estimation while reducing potential issues of unobserved heterogeneity.The estimates show that Internet access has significantly increased rural household dietary quality(measured by the Chinese Diet Balance Index).Further research finds that Internet access has increased the consumption of animal products,such as aquatic and dairy products.We also examine the underlying mechanisms.Internet access improves dietary quality and food consumption mainly through increasing household income and food expenditure.These results encourage the promotion of Internet access as a valuable tool for nutritional improvements,especially in rural areas.

Low-Cost Federated Broad Learning for Privacy-Preserved Knowledge Sharing in the RIS-Aided Internet of Vehicles

High-efficiency and low-cost knowledge sharing can improve the decision-making ability of autonomous vehicles by mining knowledge from the Internet of Vehicles(IoVs).However,it is challenging to ensure high efficiency of local data learning models while preventing privacy leakage in a high mobility environment.In order to protect data privacy and improve data learning efficiency in knowledge sharing,we propose an asynchronous federated broad learning(FBL)framework that integrates broad learning(BL)into federated learning(FL).In FBL,we design a broad fully connected model(BFCM)as a local model for training client data.To enhance the wireless channel quality for knowledge sharing and reduce the communication and computation cost of participating clients,we construct a joint resource allocation and reconfigurable intelligent surface(RIS)configuration optimization framework for FBL.The problem is decoupled into two convex subproblems.Aiming to improve the resource scheduling efficiency in FBL,a double Davidon–Fletcher–Powell(DDFP)algorithm is presented to solve the time slot allocation and RIS configuration problem.Based on the results of resource scheduling,we design a reward-allocation algorithm based on federated incentive learning(FIL)in FBL to compensate clients for their costs.The simulation results show that the proposed FBL framework achieves better performance than the comparison models in terms of efficiency,accuracy,and cost for knowledge sharing in the IoV.

A Data Intrusion Tolerance Model Based on an Improved Evolutionary Game Theory for the Energy Internet

Malicious attacks against data are unavoidable in the interconnected,open and shared Energy Internet(EI),Intrusion tolerant techniques are critical to the data security of EI.Existing intrusion tolerant techniques suffered from problems such as low adaptability,policy lag,and difficulty in determining the degree of tolerance.To address these issues,we propose a novel adaptive intrusion tolerance model based on game theory that enjoys two-fold ideas:(1)it constructs an improved replica of the intrusion tolerance model of the dynamic equation evolution game to induce incentive weights;and (2)it combines a tournament competition model with incentive weights to obtain optimal strategies for each stage of the game process.Extensive experiments are conducted in the IEEE 39-bus system,whose results demonstrate the feasibility of the incentive weights,confirm the proposed strategy strengthens the system’s ability to tolerate aggression,and improves the dynamic adaptability and response efficiency of the aggression-tolerant system in the case of limited resources.

Securing the Internet of Health Things with Certificateless Anonymous Authentication Scheme

Internet of Health Things(IoHT)is a subset of Internet of Things(IoT)technology that includes interconnected medical devices and sensors used in medical and healthcare information systems.However,IoHT is susceptible to cybersecurity threats due to its reliance on low-power biomedical devices and the use of open wireless channels for communication.In this article,we intend to address this shortcoming,and as a result,we propose a new scheme called,the certificateless anonymous authentication(CAA)scheme.The proposed scheme is based on hyperelliptic curve cryptography(HECC),an enhanced variant of elliptic curve cryptography(ECC)that employs a smaller key size of 80 bits as compared to 160 bits.The proposed scheme is secure against various attacks in both formal and informal security analyses.The formal study makes use of the Real-or-Random(ROR)model.A thorough comparative study of the proposed scheme is conducted for the security and efficiency of the proposed scheme with the relevant existing schemes.The results demonstrate that the proposed scheme not only ensures high security for health-related data but also increases efficiency.The proposed scheme’s computation cost is 2.88 ms,and the communication cost is 1440 bits,which shows its better efficiency compared to its counterpart schemes.

Deep Transfer Learning Techniques in Intrusion Detection System-Internet of Vehicles: A State-of-the-Art Review

The high performance of IoT technology in transportation networks has led to the increasing adoption of Internet of Vehicles(IoV)technology.The functional advantages of IoV include online communication services,accident prevention,cost reduction,and enhanced traffic regularity.Despite these benefits,IoV technology is susceptible to cyber-attacks,which can exploit vulnerabilities in the vehicle network,leading to perturbations,disturbances,non-recognition of traffic signs,accidents,and vehicle immobilization.This paper reviews the state-of-the-art achievements and developments in applying Deep Transfer Learning(DTL)models for Intrusion Detection Systems in the Internet of Vehicles(IDS-IoV)based on anomaly detection.IDS-IoV leverages anomaly detection through machine learning and DTL techniques to mitigate the risks posed by cyber-attacks.These systems can autonomously create specific models based on network data to differentiate between regular traffic and cyber-attacks.Among these techniques,transfer learning models are particularly promising due to their efficacy with tagged data,reduced training time,lower memory usage,and decreased computational complexity.We evaluate DTL models against criteria including the ability to transfer knowledge,detection rate,accurate analysis of complex data,and stability.This review highlights the significant progress made in the field,showcasing how DTL models enhance the performance and reliability of IDS-IoV systems.By examining recent advancements,we provide insights into how DTL can effectively address cyber-attack challenges in IoV environments,ensuring safer and more efficient transportation networks.

DTAIS:Distributed trusted active identity resolution systems for the Industrial Internet

In recent years,the Industrial Internet and Industry 4.0 came into being.With the development of modern industrial intelligent manufacturing technology,digital twins,Web3 and many other digital entity applications are also proposed.These applications apply architectures such as distributed learning,resource sharing,and arithmetic trading,which make high demands on identity authentication,asset authentication,resource addressing,and service location.Therefore,an efficient,secure,and trustworthy Industrial Internet identity resolution system is needed.However,most of the traditional identity resolution systems follow DNS architecture or tree structure,which has the risk of a single point of failure and DDoS attack.And they cannot guarantee the security and privacy of digital identity,personal assets,and device information.So we consider a decentralized approach for identity management,identity authentication,and asset verification.In this paper,we propose a distributed trusted active identity resolution system based on the inter-planetary file system(IPFS)and non-fungible token(NFT),which can provide distributed identity resolution services.And we have designed the system architecture,identity service process,load balancing strategy and smart contract service.In addition,we use Jmeter to verify the performance of the system,and the results show that the system has good high concurrent performance and robustness.

Internet of Things Authentication Protocols: Comparative Study

Nowadays, devices are connected across all areas, from intelligent buildings and smart cities to Industry 4.0 andsmart healthcare. With the exponential growth of Internet of Things usage in our world, IoT security is still thebiggest challenge for its deployment. The main goal of IoT security is to ensure the accessibility of services providedby an IoT environment, protect privacy, and confidentiality, and guarantee the safety of IoT users, infrastructures,data, and devices. Authentication, as the first line of defense against security threats, becomes the priority ofeveryone. It can either grant or deny users access to resources according to their legitimacy. As a result, studyingand researching authentication issues within IoT is extremely important. As a result, studying and researchingauthentication issues within IoT is extremely important. This article presents a comparative study of recent researchin IoT security;it provides an analysis of recent authentication protocols from2019 to 2023 that cover several areaswithin IoT (such as smart cities, healthcare, and industry). This survey sought to provide an IoT security researchsummary, the biggest susceptibilities, and attacks, the appropriate technologies, and the most used simulators. Itillustrates that the resistance of protocols against attacks, and their computational and communication cost arelinked directly to the cryptography technique used to build it. Furthermore, it discusses the gaps in recent schemesand provides some future research directions.

A Hybrid and Lightweight Device-to-Server Authentication Technique for the Internet of Things

The Internet of Things(IoT)is a smart networking infrastructure of physical devices,i.e.,things,that are embedded with sensors,actuators,software,and other technologies,to connect and share data with the respective server module.Although IoTs are cornerstones in different application domains,the device’s authenticity,i.e.,of server(s)and ordinary devices,is the most crucial issue and must be resolved on a priority basis.Therefore,various field-proven methodologies were presented to streamline the verification process of the communicating devices;however,location-aware authentication has not been reported as per our knowledge,which is a crucial metric,especially in scenarios where devices are mobile.This paper presents a lightweight and location-aware device-to-server authentication technique where the device’s membership with the nearest server is subjected to its location information along with other measures.Initially,Media Access Control(MAC)address and Advance Encryption Scheme(AES)along with a secret shared key,i.e.,λ_(i) of 128 bits,have been utilized by Trusted Authority(TA)to generate MaskIDs,which are used instead of the original ID,for every device,i.e.,server and member,and are shared in the offline phase.Secondly,TA shares a list of authentic devices,i.e.,server S_(j) and members C_(i),with every device in the IoT for the onward verification process,which is required to be executed before the initialization of the actual communication process.Additionally,every device should be located such that it lies within the coverage area of a server,and this location information is used in the authentication process.A thorough analytical analysis was carried out to check the susceptibility of the proposed and existing authentication approaches against well-known intruder attacks,i.e.,man-in-the-middle,masquerading,device,and server impersonations,etc.,especially in the IoT domain.Moreover,proposed authentication and existing state-of-the-art approaches have been simulated in the real environment of IoT to verify their performance,particularly in terms of various evaluation metrics,i.e.,processing,communication,and storage overheads.These results have verified the superiority of the proposed scheme against existing state-of-the-art approaches,preferably in terms of communication,storage,and processing costs.

Behaviour recognition based on the integration of multigranular motion features in the Internet of Things

With the adoption of cutting-edge communication technologies such as 5G/6G systems and the extensive development of devices,crowdsensing systems in the Internet of Things(IoT)are now conducting complicated video analysis tasks such as behaviour recognition.These applications have dramatically increased the diversity of IoT systems.Specifically,behaviour recognition in videos usually requires a combinatorial analysis of the spatial information about objects and information about their dynamic actions in the temporal dimension.Behaviour recognition may even rely more on the modeling of temporal information containing short-range and long-range motions,in contrast to computer vision tasks involving images that focus on understanding spatial information.However,current solutions fail to jointly and comprehensively analyse short-range motions between adjacent frames and long-range temporal aggregations at large scales in videos.In this paper,we propose a novel behaviour recognition method based on the integration of multigranular(IMG)motion features,which can provide support for deploying video analysis in multimedia IoT crowdsensing systems.In particular,we achieve reliable motion information modeling by integrating a channel attention-based short-term motion feature enhancement module(CSEM)and a cascaded long-term motion feature integration module(CLIM).We evaluate our model on several action recognition benchmarks,such as HMDB51,Something-Something and UCF101.The experimental results demonstrate that our approach outperforms the previous state-of-the-art methods,which confirms its effective-ness and efficiency.

Assessing the effectiveness of internetbased interventions for mental health outcomes:an umbrella review

Internet-based interventions(IBIs)for behavioural health have been prevalent for over two decades,and a growing proportion of individuals with mental health concerns prefer these emerging digital alternatives.However,the effectiveness and acceptability of IBIs for various mental health disorders continue to be subject to scholarly debate.We performed an umbrella review of meta-analyses(MAs),conducting literature searches in PubMed,Web of Science,Embase,Cochrane and Ovid Medline from their inception to 17 January 2023.A total of 87MAs,reporting on 1683 randomised controlled trials and 295589 patients,were included.The results indicated that IBIs had a moderate effect on anxiety disorder(standardised mean difference(SMD)=0.53,95%CI 0.44 to 0.62)and post-traumatic stress disorder(PTSD)(SMD=0.63,95%CI 0.38 to 0.89).In contrast,the efficacy on depression(SMD=0.45,95%CI 0.39 to 0.52),addiction(SMD=0.23,95%CI 0.16 to 0.31),suicidal ideation(SMD=0.23,95%CI 0.16 to 0.30),stress(SMD=0.41,95%CI 0.33 to 0.48)and obsessive-compulsive disorder(SMD=0.47,95%CI 0.22 to 0.73)was relatively small.However,no significant effects were observed for personality disorders(SMD=0.07,95%CI-0.13 to 0.26).Our findings suggest a significant association between IBIs and improved mental health outcomes,with particular effectiveness noted in treating anxiety disorders and PTSD.However,it is noteworthy that the effectiveness of IBIs was impacted by high dropout rates during treatment.Furthermore,our results indicated that guided IBIs proved to be more effective than unguided ones,playing a positive role in reducing dropout rates and enhancing patient adherence rates.

Vector Dominance with Threshold Searchable Encryption (VDTSE) for the Internet of Things

The Internet of Medical Things(IoMT)is an application of the Internet of Things(IoT)in the medical field.It is a cutting-edge technique that connects medical sensors and their applications to healthcare systems,which is essential in smart healthcare.However,Personal Health Records(PHRs)are normally kept in public cloud servers controlled by IoMT service providers,so privacy and security incidents may be frequent.Fortunately,Searchable Encryption(SE),which can be used to execute queries on encrypted data,can address the issue above.Nevertheless,most existing SE schemes cannot solve the vector dominance threshold problem.In response to this,we present a SE scheme called Vector Dominance with Threshold Searchable Encryption(VDTSE)in this study.We use a Lagrangian polynomial technique and convert the vector dominance threshold problem into a constraint that the number of two equal-length vectors’corresponding bits excluding wildcards is not less than a threshold t.Then,we solve the problem using the proposed technique modified in Hidden Vector Encryption(HVE).This technique makes the trapdoor size linear to the number of attributes and thus much smaller than that of other similar SE schemes.A rigorous experimental analysis of a specific application for privacy-preserving diabetes demonstrates the feasibility of the proposed VDTSE scheme.

A Blockchain-Based Efficient Cross-Domain Authentication Scheme for Internet of Vehicles

The Internet of Vehicles(IoV)is extensively deployed in outdoor and open environments to effectively address traffic efficiency and safety issues by connecting vehicles to the network.However,due to the open and variable nature of its network topology,vehicles frequently engage in cross-domain interactions.During such processes,directly uploading sensitive information to roadside units for interaction may expose it to malicious tampering or interception by attackers,thus compromising the security of the cross-domain authentication process.Additionally,IoV imposes high real-time requirements,and existing cross-domain authentication schemes for IoV often encounter efficiency issues.To mitigate these challenges,we propose CAIoV,a blockchain-based efficient cross-domain authentication scheme for IoV.This scheme comprehensively integrates technologies such as zero-knowledge proofs,smart contracts,and Merkle hash tree structures.It divides the cross-domain process into anonymous cross-domain authentication and safe cross-domain authentication phases to ensure efficiency while maintaining a balance between efficiency and security.Finally,we evaluate the performance of CAIoV.Experimental results demonstrate that our proposed scheme reduces computational overhead by approximately 20%,communication overhead by around 10%,and storage overhead by nearly 30%.

A dynamic algorithm for trust inference based on double DQN in the internet of things

The development of the Internet of Things(IoT)has brought great convenience to people.However,some information security problems such as privacy leakage are caused by communicating with risky users.It is a challenge to choose reliable users with which to interact in the IoT.Therefore,trust plays a crucial role in the IoT because trust may avoid some risks.Agents usually choose reliable users with high trust to maximize their own interests based on reinforcement learning.However,trust propagation is time-consuming,and trust changes with the interaction process in social networks.To track the dynamic changes in trust values,a dynamic trust inference algorithm named Dynamic Double DQN Trust(Dy-DDQNTrust)is proposed to predict the indirect trust values of two users without direct contact with each other.The proposed algorithm simulates the interactions among users by double DQN.Firstly,CurrentNet and TargetNet networks are used to select users for interaction.The users with high trust are chosen to interact in future iterations.Secondly,the trust value is updated dynamically until a reliable trust path is found according to the result of the interaction.Finally,the trust value between indirect users is inferred by aggregating the opinions from multiple users through a Modified Collaborative Filtering Averagebased Similarity(SMCFAvg)aggregation strategy.Experiments are carried out on the FilmTrust and the Epinions datasets.Compared with TidalTrust,MoleTrust,DDQNTrust,DyTrust and Dynamic Weighted Heuristic trust path Search algorithm(DWHS),our dynamic trust inference algorithm has higher prediction accuracy and better scalability.

Strengthening network slicing for Industrial Internet with deep reinforcement learning

Industrial Internet combines the industrial system with Internet connectivity to build a new manufacturing and service system covering the entire industry chain and value chain.Its highly heterogeneous network structure and diversified application requirements call for the applying of network slicing technology.Guaranteeing robust network slicing is essential for Industrial Internet,but it faces the challenge of complex slice topologies caused by the intricate interaction relationships among Network Functions(NFs)composing the slice.Existing works have not concerned the strengthening problem of industrial network slicing regarding its complex network properties.Towards this end,we aim to study this issue by intelligently selecting a subset of most valuable NFs with the minimum cost to satisfy the strengthening requirements.State-of-the-art AlphaGo series of algorithms and the advanced graph neural network technology are combined to build the solution.Simulation results demonstrate the superior performance of our scheme compared to the benchmark schemes.

Privacy-Preserving Information Fusion Technique for Device to Server-Enabled Communication in the Internet of Things:A Hybrid Approach

Due to the overwhelming characteristics of the Internet of Things(IoT)and its adoption in approximately every aspect of our lives,the concept of individual devices’privacy has gained prominent attention from both customers,i.e.,people,and industries as wearable devices collect sensitive information about patients(both admitted and outdoor)in smart healthcare infrastructures.In addition to privacy,outliers or noise are among the crucial issues,which are directly correlated with IoT infrastructures,as most member devices are resource-limited and could generate or transmit false data that is required to be refined before processing,i.e.,transmitting.Therefore,the development of privacy-preserving information fusion techniques is highly encouraged,especially those designed for smart IoT-enabled domains.In this paper,we are going to present an effective hybrid approach that can refine raw data values captured by the respectivemember device before transmission while preserving its privacy through the utilization of the differential privacy technique in IoT infrastructures.Sliding window,i.e.,δi based dynamic programming methodology,is implemented at the device level to ensure precise and accurate detection of outliers or noisy data,and refine it prior to activation of the respective transmission activity.Additionally,an appropriate privacy budget has been selected,which is enough to ensure the privacy of every individualmodule,i.e.,a wearable device such as a smartwatch attached to the patient’s body.In contrast,the end module,i.e.,the server in this case,can extract important information with approximately the maximum level of accuracy.Moreover,refined data has been processed by adding an appropriate nose through the Laplace mechanism to make it useless or meaningless for the adversary modules in the IoT.The proposed hybrid approach is trusted from both the device’s privacy and the integrity of the transmitted information perspectives.Simulation and analytical results have proved that the proposed privacy-preserving information fusion technique for wearable devices is an ideal solution for resource-constrained infrastructures such as IoT and the Internet ofMedical Things,where both device privacy and information integrity are important.Finally,the proposed hybrid approach is proven against well-known intruder attacks,especially those related to the privacy of the respective device in IoT infrastructures.

Artificial intelligence in physiological characteristics recognition for internet of things authentication

Effective user authentication is key to ensuring equipment security,data privacy,and personalized services in Internet of Things(IoT)systems.However,conventional mode-based authentication methods(e.g.,passwords and smart cards)may be vulnerable to a broad range of attacks(e.g.,eavesdropping and side-channel attacks).Hence,there have been attempts to design biometric-based authentication solutions,which rely on physiological and behavioral characteristics.Behavioral characteristics need continuous monitoring and specific environmental settings,which can be challenging to implement in practice.However,we can also leverage Artificial Intelligence(AI)in the extraction and classification of physiological characteristics from IoT devices processing to facilitate authentication.Thus,we review the literature on the use of AI in physiological characteristics recognition pub-lished after 2015.We use the three-layer architecture of the IoT(i.e.,sensing layer,feature layer,and algorithm layer)to guide the discussion of existing approaches and their limitations.We also identify a number of future research opportunities,which will hopefully guide the design of next generation solutions.

A compatible carbon efficiency information service framework based on the industrial internet identification

Green and low-carbon is a new development model that seeks balance between environmental sustainability and high economic growth.If explainable and available carbon emission data can be accurately obtained,it will help policy regulators and enterprise managers to more accurately implement this development strategy.A lot of research has been carried out,but it is still a difficult problem that how to accommodate and adapt the complex carbon emission data computing models and factor libraries developed by different regions,different industries and different enterprises.Meanwhile,with the rapid development of the Industrial Internet,it has not only been used for the supply chain optimization and intelligent scheduling of the manufacturing industry,but also been used by more and more industries as an important way of digital transformation.Especially in China,the Industrial Internet identification and resolution system is becoming an important digital infrastructure to uniquely identify objects and share data.Hence,a compatible carbon efficiency information service framework based on the Industrial Internet Identification is proposed in this paper to address the problem of computing and querying multi-source heterogeneous carbon emission data.We have defined a multi cooperation carbon emission data interaction model consisting of three roles and three basic operations.Further,the implementation of the framework includes carbon emission data identification,modeling,calculation,query and sharing.The practice results show that its capability and effectiveness in improving the responsiveness,accuracy,and credibility of compatible carbon efficiency data query and sharing services.

Blockchain-Based Message Authentication Scheme for Internet of Vehicles in an Edge Computing Environment

As an important application of intelligent transportation system,Internet of Vehicles(IoV)provides great convenience for users.Users can obtain real-time traffic conditions through the IoV’s services,plan users’travel routes,and improve travel efficiency.However,in the IoV system,there are always malicious vehicle nodes publishing false information.Therefore,it is essential to ensure the legitimacy of the source.In addition,during the peak period of vehicle travel,the vehicle releases a large number of messages,and IoV authentication efficiency is prone to performance bottlenecks.Most existing authentication schemes have the problem of low authentication efficiency in the scenario.To address the above problems,this paper designs a novel reliable anonymous authentication scheme in IoV for Rush-hour Traffic.Here,our scheme uses blockchain and elliptic curve cryptography(ECC)to design authentication algorithms for message authentication between vehicles and roadside units(RSU).Additionally,we introduce the idea of edge computing into the scheme,RSU will select themost suitable vehicle as the edge computing node for message authentication.In addition,we used the ProVerif tool for Internet security protocols and applications to test its security,ensuring that it is secure under different network attacks.In the simulation experiment,we compare our scheme with other existing works.Our scheme has a significant improvement in computational overhead,authentication efficiency and packet loss rate,and is suitable for traffic scenarios with large message volume.

The Influence of Internet Use on Women’s Depression and Its Countermeasures—Empirical Analysis Based on Data from CFPS

Based on China Family Panel Studies(CFPS)2018 data,the multiple linear regression model is used to analyze the effects of Internet use on women’s depression,and to test the robustness of the regression results.At the same time,the effects of Internet use on mental health of women with different residence,age,marital status and physical health status are analyzed.Then,we can obtain that Internet use has a significant promoting effect on women’s mental health,while the degree of Internet use has a significant inhibitory effect on women’s mental health.In addition,the study found that women’s age,education,place of residence,marital status,length of sleep,working status and physical health status are the main factors affecting the mental health of Chinese women.In the heterogeneity investigation of residence,age,marital status and physical health status,Internet use has a greater negative impact on the Center for Epidemiological Studies Depression Scale(CES-D8)scores of women in rural areas,has a significant positive impact on the mental health of middle-aged and elderly women or women with spouses,and has a positive impact on the mental health of physically unhealthy women.Therefore,in view of women’s mental health needs and the problems existing in the use of the Internet,this paper puts forward some suggestions to further improve the overall mental health level of women.

Instruments Assessing Problematic Use of the Internet and Their Associations with Psychological Distress among Ghanaian University Students

Background:The present study evaluated the psychometric properties of Problematic Internet Use(PIU)instruments and their correlation with psychological distress and time spent on Internet activities among university students in Ghana.Methods:In the present cross-sectional survey design study,520 participants(35.96% female)were recruited with a mean age of 19.55 years(SD=1.94)from several university departments(i.e.,Behavioral Sciences,Materials Engineering,Nursing and Midwifery,and Biochemistry and Biotechnology)of Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology(KNUST)between 19 July and 04 August,2023.Participants completed a survey that included the following measures:the Gaming Disorder Test(GDT),Gaming Disorder Scale for Adolescents(GADIS-A),Internet Gaming Disorder Scale-Short Form(IGDS9-SF),Bergen Social Media Addiction Scale(BSMAS),Smartphone Application Based Addiction Scale(SABAS),Nomophobia Questionnaire(NMP-Q),and the external criterion measure:Depression Anxiety Stress Scale-21(DASS-21).Confirmatory factor analysis(CFA)was carried out to evaluate the structure of the instruments.Cronbach’s α,McDonald’s ω,and composite reliability were used to evaluate internal consistency.Pearson correlation was used to examine the associations between the scores of instruments assessing PIU,time spent on Internet activities,and the level of psychological distress.Results:Model fits confirmed the(i)unidimensional structure of the GDT,BSMAS,SABAS,IGDS9-SF,(ii)two-factor structure of the GADIS-A,and(iii)four-factor structure of the NMP-Q.Additionally,the study found that different types of PIU were significantly associated with psychological distress and time spent on related Internet activities.Conclusion:The six instruments validated in the present study demonstrated very good to excellent psychometric properties when applied to university students in Ghana.The significant associations between Internet-related disorders,time spent on Internet-related activities,and psychological distress highlight the importance of addressing issues of PIU among this population.