As Internet usage has become more prevalent among youth, so too has problematic Internet use. Despite the critical role of emotion regulation in the development of adolescents’ behaviors and the role of parenting interactions on their children’s behaviors, little research has examined these links with reference to problematic and addictive Internet use for adolescents. The main goal of this study was to examine these links, based on a sample of 525 high school students (368 males; M = 15.33 years, SD = 0.47) from a predominantly middle and lower-middle socioeconomic community in Seoul, Korea. Results from structural equation modeling revealed that students’ difficulties in emotion regulation was a mediating variable between students’ perceptions of their parents’ parenting behaviors and the students’ Internet use. The findings substantiate the importance of conceptualizing addiction from a social/cognitive theoretical framework and the notion that adolescence is the onset period for many addictive behaviors and so more proactive attention needs to be given to reducing these early negative behaviors. Based on these results, interventions designed to enhance adolescents’ emotion regulatory abilities have the likelihood to mitigate problematic and even addictive Internet use among youth.

Item Type:	Refereed Article
Keywords:	parenting behavior, adolescents, emotion regulation, addiction, problematic, internet use
Research Division:	Education
Research Group:	Education Systems
Research Field:	Education Systems not elsewhere classified
Objective Division:	Education and Training
Objective Group:	Other Education and Training
Objective Field:	Education and Training not elsewhere classified
UTAS Author:	Yu, JJ (Dr JJ Yu)
UTAS Author:	Hay, I (Professor Ian Hay)
ID Code:	85762
Year Published:	2013
Web of Science® Times Cited:	25
Deposited By:	Education
Deposited On:	2013-08-07
Last Modified:	2018-01-25
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