Peer Interaction Levels Based On Online Games In Middle Childhood And Their Influences On Peer Relationships

With the development of the Internet,Peer interaction triggered by online games has become an important form of peer interaction for children.Peer relationship generated by peer communication plays an important role in children’s social development.Studies have shown that children can maintain peer relationships and build friendships through the use of online games.Under the background of online games,different children may use games and have characteristics of peer interaction.Therefore,in the use of online games,there may also be groups of children with different levels of peer interaction.Different levels of children groups may have different peer relationships.In this study,469 primary school students from grades 4 to 6 were followed up for 6 months at T1(2018.12)and T2(2019.06)respectively by peer nomination method and questionnaire method.We used the Latent Profile Analysis to classify children’s peer interactions base on online games,and explore the influence of children’s peer interaction levels base on online games on their peer relationships.On the basis of classifying children’s peer interaction based on online games,study 1 examines the differences between groups in peerrelationship variables of peer interaction levels based on online games in the same period(T1).In the second study,we examined the predictive effect of children’s peer interaction levels in online games on T2 peer relationships.The results are as follows:(1)The average scores of the four indicators of peer interactions used by children based on online games are: the number of playmates in children’s game experience sharing,the number of children’s playmates in different places,the number of playmates in children’s group games,the number of children’s playmates in the same place.The number of peer interactions of boys based on online games is higher than that of girls.The fifth and sixth grades are higher than the fourth grade in the number of children’s playmates in different places and playmates in children’s group games.The fifth grade is higher than the fourth grade in the number of playmates in children’s game experience sharing.(2)There are three levels of peer interactions for children’s online game-based peer interaction: Low level group,Middle level group,High level group,The ratios are: 64.2%、32.8%、3.0%.The three groups had significant differences in gender.Compared with the low level group,boys were more likely to enter the medium communication group and reached statistical significance(OR=2.002,p<0.01).The three interaction groups were not significantly different in grade.(3)There are significant differences in the number of friends,peer acceptance and friendship quality among different levels of peer relationships among children based on online games,but no significant difference in peer rejection among different levels of peer games based on online games.(4)The 6-month follow-up study revealed: Children’s online game-based peer interaction levels significantly predict the number of peer relationship friends,peer acceptance and friendship quality.Compared with the low-level group,the number of children ’s friends and peer acceptance in the high-level group is higher,and the number of friends and friendship in the medium-level group is higher.The type of peer interaction is not significant in predicting peer rejection.The results show that: Based on the potential profile analysis,children’s peer interaction based on online games can be divided into three levels.Peer interaction levels based on online games can influence the number of peer relationship friends,peer acceptance and friendship quality,but cannot significantly influence peer rejection.