The impact of family climate on problematic internet use: Findings from one nationwide study in China

Sep 5, 2024Journal of affective disorders

How family environment relates to problematic internet use in China

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Abstract

The overall prevalence of problematic internet use (PIU) in a nationally representative sample is approximately 30.86%.

Family communication and family health were associated with lower levels of PIU, with indirect effects of -0.12 and -0.05, respectively, through loneliness.
Loneliness mediated 80.0% of the total effect of family communication on PIU and 38.5% of the total effect of family health on PIU.
Extended family type and low family income (≤3000) were identified as protective factors against PIU.
Not living with family members was associated with an increased risk of PIU.
Cross-sectional data limits the ability to examine causal relationships between PIU, loneliness, and family climate.

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BACKGROUND: With the growing attention paid to problematic internet use (PIU), this study aims to i) explore the prevalence of PIU based on a nationally representative sample and ii) propose and validate the theoretical model that correlates family climate with PIU.

METHODS: One national cross-sectional study was conducted with probability sampling and stratified sampling. Overall, 21,854 sample were included and analyzed. Validated measures of family climate, loneliness, and PIU was distributed and collected from June 2022 to August 2022.

RESULTS: The overall prevalence of PIU in the sample population is approximately 30.86 %. The model findings showed that family communication and family health had indirect effects of -0.12 and - 0.05 on PIU by the mediating effects of loneliness. The indirect effect explained 80.0 % of the total effect of family communication on PIU and 38.5 % of family health on PIU, highlighting the dominance effects of path family communication and PIU via loneliness. Extended family type (-0.047, p = 0.050), low family income (income≤3000 group, -0.127, p < 0.001) were identified as protective factors against PIU, while not living with family members (0.034, p = 0.021) was identified as risk factors of PIU.

LIMITATIONS: The nature of cross-sectional data have the limitation of preventing examining the casual relationships of PIU and the loneliness and family climate, in which future longitudinal study design is needed.

CONCLUSIONS: The high prevalence of PIU should be given adequate attention. Optimizing the family climate or family atmosphere by improving positive communication skills, providing family support and family health external resources can be served as effective strategies for controlling PIU.

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