Internet addiction among Chinese adolescents: The effect of parental behavior and self-control

• Adolescents with IA experience more unfavorable parental behavior than the non-IA.
• Adolescents with IA have lower capacity of self-control than the non-IA.
• Parental behavior and self-control both predict Internet addiction directly.
• Self-control also acts as a mediator between parental behavior and Internet addiction.
• The results are discussed from the view of Chinese Confucian filial piety.

A cross-sectional study of a large, middle-school student sample (N = 966) was presented in this paper aiming to examine how parental behavior and self-control influence Internet addiction (IA) among Chinese adolescents. Fifty-one adolescents (the top 5% of IA score distribution) were categorized as at high risk. Males were more likely addicted to Internet than females. MANOVA demonstrated that, compared with non-IA group, adolescents with IA revealed lower mean score for parental positive support behavior and higher for parental negative control behavior and had lower capacity of self-control. SEM analyses revealed that low capacity of self-control had a negative correlation with parents’ positive support and a positive correlation with negative control. More importantly, Internet addiction was explained negatively by parents’ positive support and positively by parents’ negative control and individual low capacity of self-control. Further mediating analyses indicated that self-control accounted for an indirect role between parental behavior and adolescents’ Internet addiction. The findings of the present study are of significance in investigating adolescents’ problem behaviors and very helpful to provide educational advice for intervening in these behaviors. Moreover, the present finding’s potential relevance to Confucian styles of filial parenting was discussed.