Family Functioning And Adolescent Internet Addiction

As a serious public health problem in today's society,Internet addiction(IA)has been widely concerned by researchers.Considering that adolescent IA has a variety of negative consequences,it is particularly important to identify its influencing factors.As an important living environment for adolescents,the relationship between family functioning and adolescent IA has attracted the attention of many researchers.For example,most studies have found that there is a significant negative correlation between family functioning and adolescent IA,while a few studies do not support such results,and found that there is no significant correlation between family functioning and adolescent IA.In order to test whether there is a relationship between family functioning and adolescent IA,and how the relationship between the two,this study carried out a two-step work:In the first study,64 empirical studies on family functioning and adolescent IA were searched,screened and sorted out.After coding the results reported in the literature,meta-analysis was used to analyze the results of the study to test the correlation between family functioning and adolescent IA.The main effect test showed that there was a significant negative correlation between family functioning and IA among adolescents(r= 0.212,95%CI[-0.245,-0.177]).Further moderating analysis shows that the moderating role of IA measurement tool is significant,compared with the study of using the "Internet Addiction Test" to measure IA,researchers using the "Compulsive Internet Use Scale" reported a higher negative correlation between family functioning and IA.In addition,the moderate role of the study area is significant.Specifically,compared with the studies from Beijing area,those from Taiwan area reported a weaker negative correlation between family functioning and IA,while studies from the Middle East and Europe reported a stronger negative correlation between family functioning and IA.Finally,the moderating role of variable type of IA is significant.compared with the studies regarded IA as a dichotomous variable,studies which regards IA as a continuous variable has a stronger negative correlation between family functioning and IA.Finally,the variable types of IA play a significant role in regulation.Compared with the study that regards IA as a two-class variable,the negative correlation between family functioning and IA is stronger when the study regards IA as a continuous variable.Despite the relation between family functioning and adolescent IA has been well established in previous studies.However,little is known about its specific impact mechanisms.In Study 2,according to the framework of self-system model and attachment theory,this study intends to investigate the mediating effects of self-representation and self-representation in order to understand "how" family functionings shape individuals' self-system and then influence IA.A total of 2,758(Mage= 13.53 years,SD = 1.06)Chinese adolescents completed the Family Functioning Scale,Perceived Social Support Scale,Trust Others Scale,Global Self-esteem Scale,General Self-efficacy Scale,and Internet Addiction Diagnostic Questionnaire.After controlling for adolescent gender,age,and parents' education,parents' occupation and family economic situation,results revealed that,family functioning negatively predict adolescents IA,other-representation and self-representation play a mediating role in this connection.Multiple mediating analysis showed that,by influencing other-representation and self-representation successively,family functioning may ultimately predict adolescents IA.The findings and implications are discussed.In conclusion,through combing and summarizing the results of many previous empirical studies,this study found that there is a more reliable negative correlation between family functioning and IA.By collecting large sample data from southern China,this study further investigated the specific mechanism of the relationship between family functioning and adolescent IA within the framework of self-system process.Multiple mediator analysis supports the indirect predictive effect of family functioning on adolescent IA through other people's representation and self-representation in turn.The results reaffirmed the significance of family environment for the healthy development of adolescents and pro'vided important reference information for the future intervention plan of IA.