Social constraints associated with excessive internet use in adolescents: the role of family, school, peers, and neighbo
- PDF / 366,349 Bytes
- 9 Pages / 595.276 x 790.866 pts Page_size
- 75 Downloads / 182 Views
(0123456789().,-volV)(0123456789(). ,- volV)
ORIGINAL ARTICLE
Social constraints associated with excessive internet use in adolescents: the role of family, school, peers, and neighbourhood Lukas Blinka1
•
Nika Sˇablatu´rova´1 • Anna Sˇevcˇ´ıkova´1 • Daniela Husarova2
Received: 8 May 2020 / Revised: 16 August 2020 / Accepted: 17 August 2020 Ó Swiss School of Public Health (SSPH+) 2020
Abstract Objectives Excessive internet use (EIU) has been studied predominantly within the context of individual risk factors. Less attention has been paid to social factors, especially in a fashion complex enough to include the multiple domains of adolescent socialization. This study examined the relationship between EIU and constraints within family, school, peer groups, and neighbourhoods, while controlling for emotional and behavioural difficulties. Methods This study was based on survey data from the Health Behaviour in School-aged Children study, which was conducted in Slovakia in 2018. The sample of representative adolescents totalled 8400 (mean age: 13.44 years; SDage = 1.33; 50.9% boys). Results Multiple-step linear regression revealed that, after controlling for sociodemographic factors and emotional and behavioural difficulties, peer problems had the least effect, while the constraints related to family and neighbourhood stood out as especially problematic. Combined variables explained 20% variance of EIU. Conclusions Social constraints proved to be important factors in adolescent EIU. The important role of a problematic neighbourhood is a novel finding and suggests that it should be targeted in prevention. Keywords Excessive internet use Internet addiction Adolescents Social constraints Problematic neighbourhood
Introduction
This article is part of the special issue ‘‘Adolescent health in Central and Eastern Europe’’.
Electronic supplementary material The online version of this article (https://doi.org/10.1007/s00038-020-01462-8) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users. & Lukas Blinka [email protected] Nika Sˇablatu´rova´ [email protected] Anna Sˇevcˇ´ıkova´ [email protected] Daniela Husarova [email protected] 1
Faculty of Social Studies, Masaryk University, Josˇtova 10, 60200 Brno, Czech Republic
2
Department of Health Psychology and Methodology Research, Faculty of Medicine, P.J. Safarik University in Kosice, Kosice, Slovakia
The internet brings numerous opportunities, challenges, and even risks to adolescents (Kalmus et al. 2014). One of the risks is the addictive use of the internet. It has attracted the attention of both the general public and the research community. A number of terms exist to describe this issue, including internet addiction (Young 2004), problematic internet use (Shapira et al. 2000), and pathological internet use (Morahan-Martin and Schumacher 2000). However, these can often be used interchangeably because they are typically based on symptoms that correspond to criteria for behavioural addiction in general (Griffiths 2005). It
Data Loading...