Adolescents & Internet Addiction

 

Internet addiction, adolescent depression, and the mediating role of life events: Findings from a sample of Chinese adolescents

Linsheng Yang, Liang Sun, Zhihua Zhang, Yehuan Sun, Hongyan Wu, and Dongqing Ye

Abstract: The aim of this study is to examine the mediating role of life events in the relation between Internet addiction and depression using an adolescent sample in China. A total of 3507 urban adolescent students were asked to complete the questionnaires including Young’s Internet Addiction Scale, Adolescent Self-Rating Life Events Checklist, and Center for Epidemiologic Studies Depression Scale, Parent–Child Conflict Tactics Scales, and demographic characteristics. Path analyses demonstrated that life events fully mediated the relationship between Internet addiction and adolescent depression. Specificity for the mediating role of life events was demonstrated in comparison to alternative competing mediation models. The findings support our hypothesis that the effect of Internet addiction on adolescent depression is mediated by the life events. Further research is required to test the temporal relationship between Internet addiction and adolescent depression and explore mechanisms underlying the pathways leading to adolescent depression.

full article available at Wiley online library.

 Review

Internet addiction, adolescent depression, and the mediating role of life events is a study designed to examine the relationship between internet addiction and adolescent depression, and whether and/or how this relationship is mediated by recent life events (Yang, Sun, Zhang, Sun, Wu, & Ye - 4014). The research team was especially interested ‘stressful life events’ which are already “a well-established risk factor for depression” (Wang - 2011). 

The research team hypothesised that “Internet addiction is related to later depression among adolescents, and this relationship is mediated by stressful life events”. The hypothesis ( that Internet addiction is related to later depression among adolescents… ) was tested on a total of, 3798 students (1971 male and 1827 female), aged 14–17 years who were randomly selected for the study from secondary and intermediate schools in Hefei city of the Anhui Province, East China. These students participated in a ‘cross-sectional examination’ by completing a series of questioners focusing on internet addiction, recent life events, depressive symptoms and childhood abuse experience.

The results of this study support the argument ‘The use of online media has a negative effect on the mental health of individuals’, according to the research team, “the findings clearly supported our hypothesis” (that “the effect of internet addiction on adolescent depression is fully mediated by life events”). The statistics supporting these claims are demonstrated in figure 2 this image shows the paths between the four factors of Internet addiction, recent life events, depressive symptoms and childhood abuse experience which were measured in the study.

We can see from these results that in this study, the direct path from internet addiction to depression was not statistically significant (‘β=.05, p=.13’) however the  hypothesized model (that the relationship between internet addiction and adolescent depression was fully mediated by stressful life events) fit the data well. The research revealed that “the indirect effect of Internet addiction on depression through the mediator of life events was statistically significant (p<.01).”  The factor ‘childhood abuse experience’ was included in the study to examine the possibility, that the relationship between internet addiction , adolescent depression and  stressful life events could be explained by other common factors such as child abuse, as this possibility has been suggested in pervious study’s on this relationship. (Yates, Gregor, & Haviland, 2012; Zhang et al., 2009). According to the research team “Confidence in the importance of stressful life events as a specific mediator of the relationship between Internet addiction and depression would be further strengthened if such relationship existed even after adjustment for child abuse.” (Yang, Sun, Zhang, Sun, Wu, & Ye - 4014) and the hypothesis (that the relationship between internet addiction and adolescent depression was fully mediated by stressful life events) was still strongly supported by the data collected in ‘cross-sectional examination’ the even after adjusting for child abuse.

The research team also suggested that the social displacement model (Kraut et al., 1998 that internet addiction can cause adolescents to spend excessive time alone, on the internet, this leads to a lack of social interaction and to academic failure, leading to “more stressful life events from study, peers, and family in real-world situations”.) is a very likely explanation of how internet addiction, when mediated by stressful life events can lead to adolescent depression.   

Reference.

Internet addiction, adolescent depression, and the mediating role of life events: Finding from a sample of Chinese adolescents,- Linsheng Yang, Liang Sun, Zhihua Zhang, Yehuan Sun, Hongyan Wu, and Dongqing Ye - Anhui Medical University, Hefei, China - 2014