Internet and smartphone are inventions that have brought significant benefits to humanity However, many individuals have become addicted to using these technologies and, as a consequence, they experience negative mental effects The home confinement due to the COVID-19 pandemic may have worsened this situation Here, an epidemic model is proposed to represent the spread of the problematic technology use The model is written as a set of differential equations, which describes the time evolution of the numbers of non-users, light/moderate users, heavy users, and problematic users This model presents a single endemic steady-state, which is asymptotically stable This result is illustrated by numerical simulations and its relevance is examined from a public health perspective

中文翻译：

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技术进步对心理健康的负面影响：流行病学方法

互联网和智能手机是给人类带来重大利益的发明 但是，许多人已经沉迷于使用这些技术，因此，他们经历了负面的心理影响 COVID-19 大流行导致的家庭禁闭可能使这种情况恶化了，提出了一个流行模型来表示问题技术使用的传播 该模型被写成一组微分方程，它描述了非用户、轻/中度用户、重度用户和问题用户数量的时间演化该模型呈现了一个单一的地方性稳态，它是渐近稳定的 此结果通过数值模拟进行说明，并从公共卫生角度检查其相关性