Adolescent Life Events, Mental Flexibility And The Use Of The Internet Relationship

The report from the China Internet Network Information Center(CNNIC) indicated that until 2007, the percentage of adolescent internet users under 18 years old in all internet users was 19.1%, more than 40 millions. Adolescent internet users were an important part of the internet users and the number of adolescent internet users has become bigger and bigger. Adolescents liked to experiment and explore on the Internet because of their special psychological characteristics. But they cann't control themselves effectively due to the immaturity of their psychological development. They are easily addictive to the internet, which in turn will influence their daily life and study.Previous studies have explained adolescents' online behaviors from perspectives of users and the Internet. But adolescents' surrounding environment (family, school, society and etc.) may also have effect on their use of the Internet. Stress from various environments could lead adolescents to escape on the internet, and resilience would be an important variable in this process. So it was necessary to explore the relationships of life events, resilience, and internet use of adolescence.Through questionnaires, 450 middle school students were surveyed to explore the relationships of life events, resilience, internet service preference, and Pathological Internet Use(PIU). The results were as following:(1) Subjective stress could predict information, social, and recreational service preference significantly, and it could predict adolescents' PIU positively and significantly;(2) Information, social, and recreational service preference could significantly and positively predict PIU of adolescents;(3) Resilience could significantly and positively predict adolescents' preference to information service and recreational service, and it could significantly and negatively predict adolescents' PIU;(4) The moderating effects of resilience were not significant under any internet service preference, but the main effects of it were significant.