Role of Parent and Peer Attachment, and Family Environment in Discriminating Between Adolescents in Low and High Problematic Internet Use Groups

Abstract

Internet is the face of growing technological advancement. On one hand it helps acquiring information, makes communication across the globe easy, while on the other hand, it can result in over dependency or Problematic Internet Use. This phenomena is more commonly reported in adolescents. Considering the importance of parental and peer attachment and the family atmosphere during this vulnerable phase, the present study was undertaken to find the role of attachment and family environment in discriminating between high and low PIU among adolescents. A sample of 611 in the age group of 13-18 years were assessed using PIUQ (Demetrovics et al., 2008), IPPA (Armsden & Greenberg, 1987), and FES (Moos & Moos, 1983). The results obtained indicate that the selected variables could significantly (Wilk’s Lambda = .735, p< .001) discriminate between the two groups: high and low Problematic Internet Users.