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School Connectedness and Problematic Internet Use in Adolescents: A Moderated Mediation Model of Deviant Peer Affiliation and Self-Control

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Abstract

Although a growing body of research documents the negative association between school connectedness and adolescent problematic Internet use (PIU), little is known about the mediating mechanism (i.e., how school connectedness relates to PIU?) and moderating mechanism (i.e., when the protection is most potent?) underlying this relation. The present study examined whether deviant peer affiliation mediated the relationship between school connectedness and PIU, and whether this mediating process was moderated by adolescent self-control. A total of 2,758 Chinese adolescents (46 % male; mean age = 13.53 years, SD = 1.06) from 10 middle schools completed anonymous questionnaires regarding school connectedness, deviant peer affiliation, self-control, and PIU. After controlling for gender, age, socioeconomic status, and parental attachment, it was found that the negative association between school connectedness and adolescent PIU was partially mediated by deviant peer affiliation. Moreover, this indirect link was stronger for adolescents with low self-control than for those with high self-control. These findings underscore the importance of integrating the social control theory and organism-environment interaction model to understand how and when school connectedness impacts adolescent PIU.

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Notes

  1. Although some researchers used terms such as “Internet addiction”, “pathological Internet use”, or “Internet dependency” to describe this maladaptive behavior, we prefer the term PIU for two reasons. First, adopting the addiction perspective is inadequate because it remains debatable whether excessive Internet use constitutes an addiction (Ang et al. 2012; Holden 2010). Second, compared to “pathological” or “dependency”, the term “problematic” describes the behavior in a more inclusive manner covering the entire rang of problematic behavior from mild to severely disturbed behavior and thus can address a wide segment of the population (Ang et al. 2012).

  2. Some of the friend behaviors (e.g., drinking) seem broadly knowable by adolescents, but cheating in school exams and Internet addiction seems relatively private and difficult for adolescents to report. However, we still included these items because: (a) many cheating behaviors of Chinese adolescents (e.g., copying from other students on a test or exam) require collaboration with others and many adolescents who have cheated in school exams are often criticized/punished “openly” by their teachers, and (b) unlike in the United States, where computers are often accessed from the home, in China adolescents often go together to Internet cafés and discuss what they have done there. These characteristics enable adolescents to provide reliable and valid information about their friends’ behaviors.

  3. Structural equation modeling (SEM) can also be used to test the theoretical model in the present study. However, (a) SEM often needs complex factor structure, but the measures in this study did not have complex factor structures (Cohen et al. 2003), and (b) SEM often increases standard errors and reduces power (Ledgerwood and Shrout 2011). Therefore, we used multiple regression to estimate the model.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Key Laboratory of Adolescent Cyberpsychology and Behavior (CCNU), Ministry of Education; School of Psychology, Central China Normal University, Wuhan, 430079, China

    Dongping Li

  2. Department of Educational and Counseling Psychology, University at Albany, State University of New York, Albany, NY, USA

    Xian Li

  3. School of Education Science, Jiaying University, Meizhou, China

    Yanhui Wang

  4. Arts and Sciences College of Sichuan Normal University, Chengdu, China

    Liyan Zhao

  5. School of Psychology, South China Normal University, Guangzhou, China

    Zhenzhou Bao

  6. School of Psychology, Central China Normal University, Wuhan, China

    Fangfang Wen

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  1. Dongping Li
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Correspondence to Dongping Li.

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Li, D., Li, X., Wang, Y. et al. School Connectedness and Problematic Internet Use in Adolescents: A Moderated Mediation Model of Deviant Peer Affiliation and Self-Control. J Abnorm Child Psychol 41, 1231–1242 (2013). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10802-013-9761-9

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