Family Context Matters: A Serial Mediation Model Extending the Relationship Between Interparental Conflict and Online Gaming Addiction of Adolescents
摘要
This study examined the interactions between the factors from different family subsystems and explored how they contribute to adolescents’ online gaming addiction through multiple pathways. Based on a multistage random cluster sampling procedure, a large sample of 2001 Chinese adolescents aged between 12 and 18 years old was invited to complete a survey. Data analyses were performed by structural equation modeling in AMOS 26.0. The results indicated that interparental conflict (affiliated with the parental subsystem) was positively associated with adolescents’ online gaming addiction. Besides, interparental conflict could extend its impact on adolescent-parent anxious attachment (affiliated with the parent-child subsystem), which was in turn positively associated with online gaming addiction of adolescents. Further, interparental conflict was also positively associated with adolescents’ emotional symptoms (affiliated with the adolescent subsystem), and the increased level of emotional symptoms would improve adolescents’ probability of being addicted to online gaming subsequently. Moreover, anxious attachment and emotional symptoms formed a serial mediation pathway between interparental conflict and online gaming addiction. This study deepened the current knowledge targeting how adolescents’ online gaming addiction was related to interparental conflict through the interplay of family subsystems and it also provided solid evidence for future interventions and social policymaking in the relevant field.