ArticleHeliyon2024
The effect of childhood harshness and unpredictability on Internet addiction among college students: The mediating effect of self-control.
Article in Heliyon, 2024. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 4 papers.
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Who cites it
4 citing papers in PubMed.
- Childhood unpredictability and problematic internet pornography use among Chinese university students: a moderated serial mediation model.BMC psychology · 2026Article
- Childhood Unpredictability and Smartphone Addiction in Chinese Adolescents: Mediating Role of Self-Concept Clarity and Self-Control and Moderating Role of Psychological Resilience.Behavioral sciences (Basel, Switzerland) · 2026Article
- The effect of childhood environmental unpredictability on problematic gaming among Chinese college students: a moderated mediation model.BMC psychology · 2025Article
- Reliability and validity of the Chinese version of the retrospective family unpredictability scale.Frontiers in psychology · 2025Article
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Authors and funding
4 authors.
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Abstract
College students are inevitably online and at risk of becoming addicted. Life history theory provides an explanatory framework for individual differences in Internet addiction, and childhood harshness and unpredictability may be important antecedents. However, it is unclear whether and how childhood harshness and/or unpredictability affect Internet addiction during college. In this study, we recruited 483 Chinese college students and assessed their childhood harshness, unpredictability, self-control, and Internet addiction. The results of path analysis showed that childhood unpredictability was positively associated with Internet addiction among college students and was partially mediated by self-control. The effect of harshness on Internet addiction showed a suppression effect, i.e., the direct effect of harshness on Internet addiction was negative and the indirect effect through self-control was positive. This suggests that the high risk of Internet addiction stems from harshness and unpredictability in childhood, but that the effects of these factors are independent and distinct. Self-control plays an important role in this process, but many internal mechanisms remain to be tested in future research.
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