Bullying victimization and poor relationships with parents as risk factors of problematic internet use in adolescence

During adolescence, adolescents move away from their parents in order to establish their place in society. Therefore, there are two arenas that have a significant impact on adolescents; the family and the social one. Adolescents' intensive internet use leads to concern about Problematic Internet Use (PIU) (Siciliano et al., 2015). Therefore, the goal of this study was to examine if stressful environments such as being a victim to bullying and/or cyberbullying, and poor relationships with parents could be linked directly and indirectly to PIU. Data was collected from a representative sample of 1000 Israeli adolescents aged 12-17 (53% females, average age 14.19 (SD = 1.34)). Measures included demographics, a short problematic internet use test, relationships with parents' questionnaire, cyberbullying scale and, separately, a traditional bullying test. Path analysis model revealed that both poor parent-child communication and being a cyberbullying victim were related to PIU. Correspondingly, Poor parent-child communication had an indirect effect on PIU through bullying and/or cyberbullying victimization. Conversely, both positive mother-child communication and positive father-child communication had an indirect effect on PIU through bullying or cyberbullying victimization, implying that good communication with parents actually can assist reducing bullying victimization and PIU behavior. Limitations, conclusions, and suggestions for further research are discussed.