Understanding the link between social relationships and adolescent Internet addiction: Perspectives from two approaches to well-being

Abstract

This study aimed to investigate the associations of four dyads (mother-child, father-child, teacher-student, and student-student) of social relationships with adolescent Internet addiction (IA) and explore the seldom concurrently examined roles of life satisfaction and life meaning (indicators of hedonic and eudaimonic well-being respectively) as potential mediators and moderators in these associations. Based on data collected from 1,974 adolescents in China, the results showed that 1) father-child relationship (but not other relationships) was negatively associated with IA; 2) the mediation effects of life satisfaction and life meaning were significant on the links between father-child and student-student relationships and IA, and the suppression effect of life satisfaction (but not life meaning) was significant on the association between mother-child relationship and IA, while the mediation effects were not significant regarding teacher-child relationship; 3) life satisfaction and life meaning significantly moderated the association between father-child relationship and IA in opposite directions: life satisfaction reinforced the negative association, while life meaning mitigated the relation. The findings delineate the association between social relationships in different contexts and adolescent IA as well as the unique roles played by life satisfaction and life meaning in underlying the association.