In plain language
Teenagers now spend a large share of their waking lives online. When that use tips into compulsion — difficulty controlling time online, withdrawal, constant rumination about being online — does it cut young people off from the people who support them? And does having supportive parents, teachers and friends protect against compulsive internet use in the first place? This study is the first multi-year investigation to untangle the direction of these effects for three different sources of support.
The researchers followed 2,809 Australian students annually from Grade 8 to Grade 11 (average age 13.7 at the start), measuring compulsive internet use (CIU) and perceived social support from parents, teachers and close friends each year. Using random intercept cross-lagged panel modelling — a technique that separates stable between-person differences from genuine within-person change — they tested whether support levels predicted later CIU, and whether CIU predicted later support.
The answer depended on who the support came from. Compulsive internet use consistently preceded declines in support from teachers, suggesting CIU has real interpersonal costs at school. Surprisingly, when adolescents perceived their parents as more supportive than usual, their compulsive use tended to increase the following year — the opposite of what the researchers predicted. Friend support showed no longitudinal links with CIU in either direction. The findings suggest that simply being warm and supportive may not be enough for parents to prevent compulsive internet use, and that teachers and schools should recognise CIU as something that can erode the student–teacher relationship itself.
Key findings
- Compulsive internet use consistently preceded small within-person reductions in social support from teachers across the four years of the study (b = –.080, p = .012).
- Contrary to prediction, when adolescents saw their parents as relatively supportive, they reported more compulsive internet use the following year.
- Social support from friends showed no longitudinal links with compulsive internet use in either direction.
- At the between-person level, adolescents with higher compulsive internet use had lower support from parents (b = –.271), teachers (b = –.160) and friends (b = –.112).
- Average compulsive internet use rose steadily as adolescents progressed through high school, from Grade 8 to Grade 11.
- The study tracked 2,809 Australian adolescents (roughly half male, half female) annually from Grade 8 to Grade 11, with open data and code available on the Open Science Framework.
How to cite
APA
Donald, J. N., Ciarrochi, J., & Guo, J. (2024). Connected or cutoff? A 4-year longitudinal study of the links between adolescents' compulsive internet use and social support. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 50(2), 299–313. https://doi.org/10.1177/01461672221127802
BibTeX
@article{donald2024connected,
author = {Donald, James N. and Ciarrochi, Joseph and Guo, Jiesi},
title = {Connected or cutoff? A 4-year longitudinal study of the links between adolescents' compulsive internet use and social support},
journal = {Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin},
year = {2024},
volume = {50},
number = {2},
pages = {299--313},
doi = {10.1177/01461672221127802}
}
Related work
- All publications by Joseph Ciarrochi (searchable, with free PDFs)
- Process-Based Therapy & Idionomic Analysis
Author: Joseph Ciarrochi (ORCID 0000-0003-0471-8100). Free copy hosted with permission for scholarly use. Please cite the published version via the DOI above.