Psychological Risk Factors that Predict Social Networking and Internet Addiction in Adolescents
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Date
2020-06-26Author
Peris Hernández, Montserrat
De la Barrera, Usue
Schoeps, Konstanze
Montoya Castilla, Inmaculada
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International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health 17(12) : (202) // Article ID 4598
Abstract
Adolescents’ addictive use of social media and the internet is an increasing concern among parents, teachers, researchers and society. The purpose was to examine the contribution of body self-esteem, personality traits, and demographic factors in the prediction of adolescents’ addictive use of social media and the internet. The participants were 447 Spanish adolescents aged 13−16 years (M = 14.90, SD = 0.81, 56.2% women). We measured gender, age, body self-esteem (body satisfaction and physical attractiveness), personality traits (extraversion, neuroticism, disinhibition and narcissism) and social networking and internet addiction (internet addiction symptoms, social media use, geek behaviour, and nomophobia). The effects of gender, age, body self-esteem and personality on the different dimensions of internet addiction were estimated, conducting hierarchical linear multiple regression analysis and a fuzzy-set qualitative comparative analysis (fsQCA). The results evidenced different pathways explaining four types of adolescents’ internet addiction: gender and disinhibition were the most relevant predictors of addiction symptoms; gender combined with physical attractiveness best explained social media use; narcissism and neuroticism appear to be the most relevant predictors of geek behaviour; and narcissism was the variable that best explained nomophobia. Furthermore, the advantages and differences between both methodologies (regressions vs. QCA) were discussed.
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Except where otherwise noted, this item's license is described as 2020 by the authors. Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland. This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).