Early adolescent Internet game addiction in context: How parents, school, and peers impact youth

The aim of this study was to identify the underlying mediating mechanisms between the parent-adolescent relationship and Internet game addiction (IGA). A sample of 833 adolescents initially in the 7th grade completed anonymous questionnaires regarding the parent-adolescent relationship, school connectedness, deviant peer affiliation, and IGA during a one year period. Structural equation models showed that both school connectedness and deviant peer affiliation fully mediated the association between the parent-adolescent relationship and adolescent IGA. School connectedness also significantly predicted deviant peer affiliation, forming a sequential mediation model. In general, the results indicated that a low quality parent-adolescent relationship predicted IGA by way of diminishing school connectedness and enhancing affiliations with deviant peers. The non-significant pathway from parent-adolescent relationship to adolescent IGA supports the idea that a distal parent-adolescent relationship still retains a substantial influence on the development of adolescents' IGA, but through the more important proximal variables of school connectedness and deviant peer affiliation. Identifying the processes by which the parent-adolescent relationship is associated with adolescents' IGA has important implications for developing an integrative framework of theory and prevention.