The 11th International Conference on Behavioral Addictions (ICBA 2026) was held in Istanbul, Turkey on August 24-26, organized by the International Association for the Study of Behavioral Addictions (President - Professor Zsolt Demetrovich of Flinders University, Australia).
The conference was dedicated to the study of behavioral addictions, namely - Problematic Use of Internet and its forms (problematic online gaming and online gambling, Problema Use of Social Media, addiction to smartphones, mindless scrolling, etc.). About 600 scientists from more than 50 countries of the world participated in the conference.
Zviad Kirtava, an affiliated professor at the Caucasus School of Medicine (CMS), delivered a presentation at the conference. The report touched on the study of Internet addiction and its various forms among Georgian and foreign students, which was conducted for the first time in Georgia, and on the psychometric analysis and validation in the Georgian scientific space of such modern research tools for their determination, such as CIUS-14 (Compulsive Internet Use scale), BSMAS-6 (for determining social media addiction) and JSS-4 (for determining sleep disturbances). The study was conducted by a group of researchers who worked at the Shota Rustaveli National Scientific Fund Fundamental Research grant project: Zviad Kirtava, Ana Dekanosidze, Melania Chargazia, Ketevan Silagadze, Akaki Kapanadze and Giorgi Makharashvili, as well as the 5th year students of CMS, Krishna and Shri Muthuvelayutham Sangaranachiar. The research co-participants were International Black Sea University and Georgian-American University.
During the conference, Zviad Kirtava held meetings with various renowned researchers with whom he participates in joint research and preparation of publications - Prof. Demetrovich and Prof. Daniel King (Flinders University, Adelaide, Australia), Susana Jimenez and Fernando Fernandez (University Hospital Bellvitge, Barcelona, Spain), Christian Montague (University of Macau, China), Katalin Felvinczi (ELTE, Budapest, Hungary), Artemisa Dore (University of Porto, Portugal) and others.
The conference proceedings have been published as an e-book and will be published in December in the highly rated international scientific journal Journal of Behavioral Addictions (JBA)
