Family processes and Internet addiction in Chinese adolescents in Hong Kong

Abstract

Adolescent addictive problems such as Internet addiction are rising globally. Research findings showed that Internet addiction adversely affects different developmental domains of adolescents, including the physical, psychological, social and spiritual domains. According to the ecological perspective, factors in different systems such as school, community, and peer systems contribute to adolescent Internet addiction. However, compared with research in other systems (particularly personal factors), research examining how different family processes contribute to adolescent Internet addiction is lacking, particularly in the Chinese culture.

To fill the research gap, this study was conducted to examine how different family processes, including parental behavioral control, parental psychological control, and parent-child relational qualities, influence adolescent Internet addiction. A total of 3,328 Chinese junior secondary school students responded to measures of perceived behavioral control, perceived psychological control, parent-child relational qualities, family functioning, and adolescent Internet addiction.

Regarding measures of dyadic parent-child relational qualities, consistent with our expectations, both exploratory factor analysis (EFA) and confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) showed that three distinct factors (parental behavioral control, parental psychological control, and parent-child relational qualities) were extracted from the father-child and mother-child relational measures. The findings supported the hypothesized models, with good internal consistency for the various scales and subscales.

Consistent with our predictions, while parental behavioral control and parent-child relational qualities were negatively associated with adolescent Internet addiction, parental psychological control was positively correlated with adolescent Internet addiction. Multiple regression analyses showed that parental behavioral control, parental psychological control, parent-child relational qualities, and family functioning predicted adolescent Internet addiction. Compared to mother-child relational processes, paternal behavioral control, father-child relational quality, and father-child subsystem showed stronger impacts on adolescent Internet addiction.