Peer victimization and Internet addiction among adolescents: The role of anger rumination and social dominance orientation
Jiahui Chen
Collaborative Innovation Center of Assessment Toward Basic Education Quality, Beijing Normal University, Beijing, China
Search for more papers by this authorYuke Xiong
Collaborative Innovation Center of Assessment Toward Basic Education Quality, Beijing Normal University, Beijing, China
Search for more papers by this authorQuanquan Wang
Collaborative Innovation Center of Assessment Toward Basic Education Quality, Beijing Normal University, Beijing, China
Search for more papers by this authorXiaofeng Xu
School of Psychology, Fujian Normal University, Fuzhou, People's Republic of China
Search for more papers by this authorXingna Qin
Collaborative Innovation Center of Assessment Toward Basic Education Quality, Beijing Normal University, Beijing, China
Department of Sociology, University of Groningen, TG Groningen, The Netherlands
Search for more papers by this authorCorresponding Author
Ping Ren
Collaborative Innovation Center of Assessment Toward Basic Education Quality, Beijing Normal University, Beijing, China
Correspondence Ping Ren, Collaborative Innovation Center of Assessment Toward Basic Education Quality, Beijing Normal University, No. 19 Xinjiekouwai St, 100875 Beijing, China.
Email: [email protected]
Search for more papers by this authorJiahui Chen
Collaborative Innovation Center of Assessment Toward Basic Education Quality, Beijing Normal University, Beijing, China
Search for more papers by this authorYuke Xiong
Collaborative Innovation Center of Assessment Toward Basic Education Quality, Beijing Normal University, Beijing, China
Search for more papers by this authorQuanquan Wang
Collaborative Innovation Center of Assessment Toward Basic Education Quality, Beijing Normal University, Beijing, China
Search for more papers by this authorXiaofeng Xu
School of Psychology, Fujian Normal University, Fuzhou, People's Republic of China
Search for more papers by this authorXingna Qin
Collaborative Innovation Center of Assessment Toward Basic Education Quality, Beijing Normal University, Beijing, China
Department of Sociology, University of Groningen, TG Groningen, The Netherlands
Search for more papers by this authorCorresponding Author
Ping Ren
Collaborative Innovation Center of Assessment Toward Basic Education Quality, Beijing Normal University, Beijing, China
Correspondence Ping Ren, Collaborative Innovation Center of Assessment Toward Basic Education Quality, Beijing Normal University, No. 19 Xinjiekouwai St, 100875 Beijing, China.
Email: [email protected]
Search for more papers by this authorAbstract
Introduction
Internet addiction has garnered growing attention in recent years, and peer victimization plays a major contributor to adolescents' Internet addiction. However, little is known about the mediating and moderating mechanisms in the association between peer victimization and Internet addiction. Guided by cognitive behavioral model and worldview verification model, this study examined a moderated mediation model in which anger rumination at Time 1 (T1) mediated the association between peer victimization at T1 and Internet addiction at Time 2 (T2), and this mediation effect was moderated by T1 social dominance orientation (SDO).
Methods
A short-term longitudinal design was adopted, incorporating two measurement occasions (with approximately 6-month intervals). Participants were 2597 adolescents (51.5% male, Mage = 13.9, SD = 0.60) from seven secondary schools in Zhengzhou City, China. All participants were invited to complete the self-reported questionnaires assessing peer victimization, anger rumination, SDO at T1 (December 2015) and Internet addiction at T2 (June 2016), respectively. A short-term longitudinal moderated mediation model was conducted to analyze the association between variables.
Results
The results showed that T1 peer victimization was positively associated with T2 Internet addiction in which association was mediated by T1 anger rumination. T1 SDO moderated the associations between T1 peer victimization and T1 anger rumination and this effect was stronger with lower levels of SDO. In terms of gender differences, SDO moderated the associations between peer victimization and anger rumination only for boys.
Conclusions
Results highlight that anger rumination is a potential mechanism explaining how peer victimization is related to Internet addiction and that this relation may be moderated by SDO.
CONFLICT OF INTEREST STATEMENT
The authors declare no conflict of interest.
Open Research
DATA AVAILABILITY STATEMENT
The data that support the findings of this study are available on request from the corresponding author. The data are not publicly available due to privacy or ethical restrictions.
Supporting Information
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Please note: The publisher is not responsible for the content or functionality of any supporting information supplied by the authors. Any queries (other than missing content) should be directed to the corresponding author for the article.
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