Elsevier

Comprehensive Psychiatry

Volume 92, July 2019, Pages 22-27
Comprehensive Psychiatry

Parenting styles, perceived social support and emotion regulation in adolescents with internet addiction

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.comppsych.2019.03.003Get rights and content
Under a Creative Commons license
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Highlights

  • We investigated the parental attitudes, social support and emotion regulation in adolescents with Internet Addiction (IA).

  • Parents of adolescents with IA were more frequently inadequate in parenting and had less emotional availability.

  • Adolescents with IA had less social support and more difficulty in identification of their feelings and emotion regulation.

  • Lower parental supervision, higher alexithymia and the presence of an anxiety disorder are significant predictors of IA.

  • Prevention and treatment of IA in adolescents should focus on improvement of parenting, social support and emotion regulation.

Abstract

Aim

The aim of this study is to investigate parental attitudes, perceived social support, emotion regulation and the accompanying psychiatric disorders seen in adolescents who, having been diagnosed with Internet Addiction (IA), were referred to an outpatient child and adolescent psychiatric clinic.

Methods

Of 176 adolescents aged 12–17, 40 were included in the study group. These scored 80 or higher on Young's Internet Addiction Test (IAT) and met Young's diagnostic criteria for IA based on psychiatric interviews. Forty adolescents who matched them in terms of age, gender and socio-economic level were included in the control group. The Schedule for Affective Disorders and Schizophrenia for School-Age Children (K-SADS-PL), the Parenting Style Scale (PSS), the Lum Emotional Availabilty of Parents (LEAP), the Social Support Appraisals Scale for Children (SSAS-C), the Difficulties in Emotion Regulation Scale (DERS) and the Toronto Alexithymia Scale-20 (TAS-20) were applied.

Results

The results showed that the parents of adolescents with IA were more frequently inadequate in acceptance/involvement, supervision/monitoring and they had less emotional availability. The adolescents with IA had less perceived social support, greater difficulty in the identification and verbal expression of their feelings and emotion regulation. Lower parental strictness/supervision, higher alexithymia and the existence of an anxiety disorder were found to be significant predictors of IA. Internet addicted adolescents with comorbid major depressive disorder had higher levels of alexithymia and lower levels of emotional availability in their parents.

Conclusion

It can be concluded that strategies for the prevention and treatment of IA in adolescents should focus on improving the quality of parenting parent-adolescent relationships, enhancing perceived social support and emotion regulation while reducing the associated psychiatric symptoms in adolescents.

Keywords

Adolescent
Internet addiction
Parenting
Social support
Emotional availability
Emotion regulation

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