A Follow-up Study On The Relationship Between Parent-child Relationship,emotional Regulation Difficulties And Internet Addiction Among Junior High School Students

Internet addiction is a common problem among today’s youth and can have many negative effects on their academic development and physical and mental health.Many studies have found that parent-child relationships can negatively predict adolescent Internet addiction.Many studies on individual factors have been conducted from two perspectives: cognitive and emotional,but not many studies have been conducted on the mediating effect of emotion regulation on parent-child relationship and Internet addiction.Therefore,this study selected parent-child relationship(mother-child relationship and father-child relationship)and emotion regulation difficulties to investigate the mechanism of their effects on Internet addiction in junior high school students.In this study,questionnaires were collected twice at two time points,six months apart,with junior high school students in their first,second,and third years of study.Purpose: To explore the relationship between parent-child relationship,emotion regulation ability and Internet addiction among junior high school students;Method:Using the whole group sampling method,information was collected from 1101 students in a middle school in Gao An City using the Diagnostic Inventory of Internet Addiction,the Parent-Child Relationship Scale,and the Emotion Regulation Difficulties Questionnaire,and each variable was analyzed using SPSS26.0 and Mplus8.3 to develop simple mediation models and cross-lagged models.The following results were obtained:(1)Analysis of the differences between the Internet addiction group and the nonInternet addiction group: The scores of parent-child relationship in the non-Internet addiction group were significantly higher than those in the Internet addiction group,and there were significant differences with the parent-child relationship in the Internet addiction group.The results of the difference analysis in the two groups’ difficulties in emotion regulation showed that the level of difficulties in emotion regulation in the Internet addiction group was significantly lower than that in the non-Internet addiction group,especially in the dimension of lack of emotion regulation strategies the difference in scores was particularly large and significantly different.(2)In the simple mediating effect model of mother-child relationship and fatherchild relationship,mother-child relationship and father-child relationship can negatively predict Internet addiction;the level of difficulty in emotion regulation can positively predict the degree of Internet addiction;the mediating effect of emotion regulation is significant,that is,mother-child relationship or father-child relationship can predict Internet addiction through emotion regulation.The mediating effect of the mother-child relationship model was partial,accounting for 15.2% of the total effect size,and the mediating effect of the model of the father-child relationship model was partial,accounting for 24% of the total effect size.The model mediation test revealed that only the dimension of lack of strategy in emotion regulation played an important partial mediation role in mother-child and father-child relationships.(3)In the cross-lagged model,the prevalence of Internet addiction measured at the two time points were: 7.7% and 8.3%,respectively,and the prevalence of Internet addiction measured at the second measurement was significantly higher than that measured at the first measurement.The findings suggest that both emotional regulation difficulties and father-child relationships at the junior high school level are predictive of Internet addiction.Among them,in the mother-child relationship cross-lagged model,emotional regulation difficulties predicted Internet addiction six months later.In the father-child relationship cross-lagged model,emotion regulation predicted the fatherchild relationship six months later;and the father-child relationship predicted the level of Internet addiction six months later.In summary,this study revealed the interaction between parent-child relationship and Internet addiction in junior high school students and the mechanism of the role of emotion regulation in it.The results of the study can provide an in-depth understanding of the mechanisms of parent-child relationship,emotion regulation and Internet addiction in junior high school students,and have important practical value for the development of prevention and intervention strategies for Internet addiction in junior high school students.