Table of Contents

ABSTRACT

With the advance of information technology, young people have more opportunities to use the Internet for study, social networking and entertainment. As a result, misuse of the Internet in terms of addiction to the Internet has increased. Based on a large sample (N = 4,922), we examined the prevalence of Internet addiction (IA) and the background socio-demographic correlates of IA problems in Chinese adolescents. We used the Chinese version of the Internet Addiction Test to examine these questions in a sample of Chinese adolescents in Sichuan, China. Results showed that roughly one-fifth of the adolescents could be classified as having “mild” form of IA. Regarding socio-demographic correlates, we observed that older participants showed a higher level of IA symptoms than younger participants; higher grade students displayed more IA symptoms than lower grade students; male students showed more IA symptoms than did female students. We also found that IA was related to academic performance, lifestyle character-istics (sleep duration, exercise duration, consumption of soft drinks), and relationship quality with the caregivers.

Keywords: Internet addiction, Chinese adolescents, prevalence, socio-demographic correlates