Internet addiction of adolescents in China: Prevalence, predictors, and association with well-being

By Ligang Wang, Jing Luo, Yuanyuan Bai, Jie Kong, Wenbin Gao, Xinying Sun. 2013

138 citations recorded by the source corpus.

Internet addiction is a mental health problem that affects a significant number of people worldwide. Our study attempted to investigate the prevalence of Internet addiction among Chinese adolescents and to explore the predictors of Internet addiction and its association with well-being. A total of 10,988 adolescents from nine different cities in China were surveyed using the Diagnostic Questionnaire (DQ) for Internet addiction, the Center for Epidemiologic Studies Depression Scale, the Rosenberg Self-esteem Scale, and the Adolescent's Satisfaction with Life Scale. The mean age of the whole sample was 17.2 years (ranging from 13 to 23 years). The prevalence rate of Internet addiction among the surveyed adolescents was 7.5%, which was influenced by gender and grade (χ2 = 74.027, p < 0.001; χ2 = 7.162, p < 0.05). The breadth of extracurricular activities, the age when people used Internet for the first time, and whether people used Internet for the first time in Internet bar were significant predictors of Internet addiction (β = −0.065, p < 0.001; β = −0.101, p < 0.001; β = 0.545, p < 0.001). Finally, our study found evidence demonstrating the link between Internet addiction and well-being. Increased symptoms of problematic use were associated with decreased self-esteem (F = 258.344, p < 0.001), satisfaction with life (F = 232.428, p < 0.001), and increased depression (F = 607.062, p < 0.001).

Subfields: Communication, Education, Sociology and Political Science

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/cf992542ab392321f38dc3817642afc43d591bdb

How researchers see this paper

The researchers whose trusted networks rank it highest, strongest advocate first. Every researcher gets a different order.

In Communication

In Education

In Sociology and Political Science

Citations in the corpus

Pathological video-gaming among youth: A prospective study examining dynamic protective factors (2015, background): “Recent studies conducted in China (Wang et al., 2013), Singapore (Choo et al.”
Technological addictions and social connectedness: predictor effect of internet addiction, social media addiction, digital game addiction and smartphone addiction on social connectedness (2017, background): “Research have shown that internet addiction, social media addiction, smartphone addiction and digital game addiction are associated with “depression” (24-27), “impulsivity” (7,28-30), “loneliness” (31-34), “sleep quality” (25,27,35,36), “well-being” (25,37-39), “self-esteem” (33,34,40,41) and “acade”
Reciprocal associations between shyness, self-esteem, loneliness, depression and Internet addiction in Chinese adolescents (2020, background): “2017), psychological dysfunction (Wang et al. 2013; Han et al. 2017), and emotional and behavioral challenges (Ivezaj et al.”