Peer assessment as a method for measuring harmful internet use.

Harmful Internet use (HIU) describes unintended use of the Internet. It could be both self-harm and harming others. Our research goal is to develop a more accurate method for measuring HIU by this novel peer assessment. As such, it may become, with our call for more research, a paradigm shift supplementing every rating scale or other type of Internet use assessment. In addition to classic statistical analysis, structural equations have been employed. Results indicate that the true positive rate (TPR) is substantially higher than assessed in other studies.•Peer assessment improvement.•AUC for ROC was computed to establish cut-off points for the used scale.•Results obtained by the Structural Equation model indicate that parental care has a moderate influence on subjects' attempts to fight HIU.