Elsevier

Computers in Human Behavior

Volume 30, January 2014, Pages 164-170
Computers in Human Behavior

Loneliness, social contacts and Internet addiction: A cross-lagged panel study

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.chb.2013.08.007Get rights and content

Highlights

  • We examine causal orders in the relationships between IAD, loneliness, and social isolation.

  • Excessive Internet use would increase feelings of loneliness over time.

  • Offline social contacts with family and friends would help to reduce symptoms of IAD.

Abstract

This study aims to examine the causal priority in the observed empirical relationships between Internet addiction and other psychological problems. A cross-lagged panel survey of 361 college students in Hong Kong was conducted. Results show that excessive and unhealthy Internet use would increase feelings of loneliness over time. Although depression had a moderate and positive bivariate relationship with Internet addiction at each time point, such a relationship was not significant in the cross-lagged analyses. This study also found that online social contacts with friends and family were not an effective alternative for offline social interactions in reducing feelings of loneliness. Furthermore, while an increase in face-to-face contacts could help to reduce symptoms of Internet addiction, this effect may be neutralized by the increase in online social contacts as a result of excessive Internet use. Taken as a whole, findings from the study show a worrisome vicious cycle between loneliness and Internet addiction.

Introduction

Researchers around the world from the domains of communication, psychology, and psychiatry have paid considerable attention in recent years to the rising issue of problematic use of the Internet (PIU), or Internet addiction (IAD) (Griffiths et al., 1999, Tao et al., 2010, Young, 2004, Zhang et al., 2008). While the ontological and epidemiological issues surrounding Internet addiction being a clinical pathology are still the subject of many intellectual debates (Czincz and Hechanova, 2009, Frances and Widiger, 2012, Pies, 2009, Widyanto and Griffiths, 2006), social and behavioral scientists generally believe that such a phenomenon indeed exists (Chou, Condron, & Belland, 2005) and that excessive and compulsive Internet use would negatively impact a person’s physical, psychological, and social well-being (Davis, 2001, Young, 1998).

Many studies have examined Internet addiction, its social and psychological correlates, and possible treatments (Beard, 2005). While this body of research has identified a number of related factors to the problem, such as depression, loneliness, and social isolation (Ceyhan and Ceyhan, 2008, Chou et al., 2005, Davis, 2001, Young and Roger, 1998), the causal direction of the relationships between these psychosocial problems and Internet addiction have not yet been clearly established (Chou et al., 2005). To fill this void, this study aims to determine the causal priority in the empirical relationship between Internet addiction and Internet users’ subjective feelings of depression and loneliness. The effects of online and offline social interactions are also examined.

Section snippets

Conceptualizing Internet addiction

Various labels (e.g., compulsive Internet use, pathological Internet use, Internet addiction disorder, Internet usage disorder, and problematic Internet use, etc.) have been adopted to describe the phenomenon of people engaging in excessive and unhealthy use of the Internet. (Widyanto & Griffiths, 2006). It has been widely recognized as a significant mental health issue worldwide. In 2012, the American Psychiatric Association recommended including “Internet Use Disorder” for further study in

Internet addiction and psychosocial problems

Numerous studies from around the world found Internet addiction to be positively associated with other psychosocial problems, such as feelings of depression and loneliness (Beard, 2005, Chou et al., 2005, Ha et al., 2007, Tokunaga and Rains, 2010). Morahan-Martin and Schumacher (2000) found that 8% of their sample of undergraduate students in the United States were engaging in pathological Internet use, and were experiencing a greater degree of loneliness than their non-addicted counterparts.

Method

A two-wave panel survey was conducted. Students in two major public universities in Hong Kong were invited to fill out two online questionnaires four months apart. Each participant received a HK$50 cash coupon from a local supermarket (approximately US$6.5) for completing the first survey and another HK$50 upon completion of the follow-up questionnaire. The second-wave questionnaire was nearly identical to the first one.

Sample

An invitation email for the survey was distributed through the student unions of the two universities. A total of 636 participants completed the first wave of questionnaires within a period of 2 weeks. A follow-up email was sent to these 636 participants after four months, inviting them to participate in the second-wave survey. A reminder was sent out one week later. In total, 361 of the 636 participants completed both questionnaires. Among the participants, 51.7% of them were males, 37.6% of

Questionnaire development and measurement

Over 90% of the population in Hong Kong is ethnically Chinese. However, being a British colony for nearly a century, the majority of educated individuals in Hong Kong are bilingual. Both Chinese and English are official languages, and all public documents published by the Government are in both languages. English is also the medium of instruction at the two universities from which our sample was drawn. Given this situation, a bilingual questionnaire was used, with each item in the survey

Data analysis

The present study adopted a classic two-wave cross-lagged panel design (Campbell, 1963, Kenny, 1973). A path analysis approach to analyzing cross-lagged panel data as suggested by Kessler and Greenberg (1981) was employed to test our hypotheses. Specifically, we were interested in evaluating the relative strength of the cross-lagged relationships between the set of variables X and Y measured in time 1 and time 2 in a cross-lagged panel structural model (Fig. 1). To ensure consistency in our

Depression and symptoms of Internet addiction

The first hypothesis (H1) predicted that individuals’ subjective feelings of depression would lead to symptoms of Internet addiction. As can be seen from Table 1, the bivariate correlations between depression and Internet addiction at both time 1 and time 2, and all cross-lagged correlations between the two variables were significant and positive, suggesting that there was indeed a positive relationship between feelings of depression and symptoms of Internet addiction. However, a test of the

Discussion

This study conducted a cross-lagged panel survey to establish the causal order in the empirical relationships between subjective feelings of loneliness and depression, and symptoms of Internet addiction.

Our study makes several notable contributions to Internet addiction research. First, the hypotheses in this study were derived from a cognitive behavioral perspective of Internet addiction (Davis, 2001). From this view, pathological Internet use is a maladaptive behavior aimed to reduce negative

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