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Internet use has rapidly spread around the world becoming an indispensable part of daily life. Despite its advantages, the dysfunctional use or abuse of the Internet can lead to addiction problems. The main objectives established in this study were to assess the prevalence of Internet use in the general Galician population and the prevalence of problematic internet use (PIU) and at-risk of PIU in 2017. The Surveillance Information System on Risk Behavior is based on annual cross-sectional surveys among the population aged at least 16 years residing in Galicia, Spain. A total of 7,841 participants were recruited in 2017 using a stratified random sampling. Internet users were classified into three categories: normal use, maladaptive/at-risk of PIU and PIU, based on their score in the Internet-related experiences questionnaire. A total of 74.8%, 95% CI [73.8-75.8], of the Galician population aged 16 to 74 used the Internet in the month before the survey was performed, exceeding 95% in the population aged below 45 years. Most users use chat applications and social networks. The prevalence of PIU or at-risk of PIU in the population aged 16 to 74 was 1.0% [0.8-1.3], reaching 5.2% [4.2-6.2] in the population aged between 16 and 24. The prevalence of Internet use in Galicia is slightly lower than those obtained in Spain and Europe. Moreover, PIU is an emerging problem in the population with the youngest population being the most affected.

Background: Europe has had a large variability in COVID-19 incidence between and within countries, particularly after June 2020. We aim to assess the variability between European countries and regions located in a given country., Methods: We used ECDC information including countries having 7 regions or more. The metric used to assess the regional variability within a country was the intercuartilic range in a weekly basis for 32 weeks between June 29 th 2020 and February 1 st 2021. We also calculated each country's overall variability across the 32 weeks using the distances from the regional curves of the 14-day incidence rates to the corresponding national curve, using the L 2 metric for functional data. We afterwards standardised this metric to a scale from 0 to 100 points. We repeated the calculations excluding island regions., Results: The variability between and within countries was large. Slovenia, Spain and Portugal have the greatest variability. Spain and Slovenia held also the top three places for the greatest number of weeks (Spain for 19 weeks and Slovenia for 10) with the highest variability. For variability among the incidence curves across the 32-week period, Slovenia, Portugal and Spain ranked first in functional variability, when all the regions were analysed but also when the island regions were excluded., Conclusions: These differences might be due to how countries tackled the epidemiological situation. The persistent variability in COVID-19 incidence between regions of a given country suggests that governmental action may have an important role in applying epidemiological control measures., Competing Interests: The authors declare that the research was conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest., (Copyright © 2022 Ruano-Ravina, López-Vizcaíno, Candal-Pedreira, Santiago-Pérez and Pérez-Ríos.)