College Students' Internet Addiction And Life Events, Coping Style, Social Support

In recent years, Internet Addiction Disorder (IAD), also known as Pathological Internet Use (PIU), has become one of the major topics in the research of psychology in foreign countries. By using questionnaires and selecting 370 college students as subjects, this paper, probed into the forecasting functions of some psychological variables which reflect self-adjustments and social resources, such as events in life, coping styles, and social support, to the college students' inclination of internet addiction disorder, in order to bring to light those influential dimensions which result in the college students' inclination of internet addiction disorder, and to provide with some trains of thought to help to take active and effective measures to prevent those negative influences brought by the college students' over-use of internet.In this research, we have got those following findings:1, there are sex differences and grade differences among those Internet users who are highly addicted to the Internet. Male students are much easier to be highly addicted than female students, and juniors are easier to be highly addicted than those of other grades. However, differences haven't been found, among different majors.2, there are significant differences in each dimensions in their life events of those Internet users who are at different levels addicted. Three dimensions, including "health adjustment", "others", and "interpersonal relationships", have forecasting functions to the inclination of Internet addiction disorder.3, there are significant differences in the total scores in the self-blame dimension, the imagination dimension, the withdraw dimension and the coping dimension among those, at different levels, addicted Internet users. The self-blame dimension and the help-seeking dimension could be used to forecast the inclination.4, there are significant differences in the total scores of the objective support dimension, the subjective support dimension, the support application dimension and the social support dimension among those, at different levels, addicted Internet users. Through the regression analysis of the social support, it was be found that the subjective dimension could be used to forecast the inclination.5, there are significant differences in the time, frequency and motivation of Internet usage among those, at different levels, addicted Internet users. The online time dimension, the online frequency dimension and the motivation dimension could be used to somehow forecast the inclination.6, A forecasting model was established of the inclination of the Internet addiction. It showed that life events, coping styles, social supports and Internet usages' Characteristics, are closely related to the inclination of the Internet addiction. By using path analysis, It was found that: life events, immature coping styles and interpersonal communication in cyberspace can directly forecast the inclination; life events, social supports, motivation of knowledge acquisition can indirectly forecast the inclination with immature coping as intermedia; social support as well asinterpersonal communication can indirectly forecast the inclination with online time as intermedia; immature coping styles can not only directly forecast the inclination, but also, with mature coping styles, can forecast the inclination with interpersonal communication in cyberspace as intermedia.