Excessive internet use by young Europeans: psychological vulnerability and digital literacy?

ABSTRACT

This paper combines clinical-psychological and digital literacy frameworks to shed new light on explanations for excessive Internet use (EIU). The combination of these opposing approaches leads to a more comprehensive explanation of intense use with negative outcomes. A survey with a random sample of 18,709 Internet-using children between 11 and 16 years old was carried out in 25 European countries. The study shows that there are interactional and indirect relationships between psychological and digital literacy variables and EIU. Psychologically vulnerable children with higher levels of digital engagement have the most negative outcomes while the least at risk are non-vulnerable children with high levels of literacy (interactional relationship). In reality, psychologically vulnerable children’s risk of negative outcomes is exacerbated by their tendency to spend more time online but countered by their lower literacy levels (contradicting direct and indirect relationships). Among those who are not vulnerable, digital literacy is weakly related to negative outcomes. The implications of these results for future research are that explanations for EIU should incorporate psychological and digital literacy indicators. Practical implications are that clinical psychologists working with EIU should consider digital literacy in developing interventions and that digital inclusion interventions should consider the potential negative impact of increased Internet use on vulnerable young people. This paper’s original contribution lies in showing that whether intense Internet use is related to negative outcomes depends on the psychological characteristics of the child.

KEYWORDS:

• Digital literacy
• excessive internet use
• internet addiction
• children online
• young people online

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes on contributors

Ellen Johanna Helsper is Associate Professor in the Media and Communications Department at the London School of Economics and Political Science. Her research interests include the links between social and digital inequalities; mediated interpersonal communication; and methodological innovation in media and communications research and is lead investigator on the From Digital Skills to Tangible Outcomes projects. She consults for governments, the third and commercial sector on participation in increasingly digital societies. [email protected]

David Smahel is Professor at the Institute of Children, Youth and Family Research, Masaryk University, the Czech Republic. He is a member of Interdisciplinary Research Team on Internet and Society which researches social-psychological implications of the Internet and technology. His current research focuses on adolescents’ and adults’ Internet use, the online risks of children and adolescents, the construction of online identities and virtual relationships, and Internet addiction. [email protected]

Notes

1 Path modeling assesses the relative strength of direct and indirect relationships of variables with the dependent variables. It can determine whether a model such as the one shown in Figure 1 can explain the pattern of correlations in the data, since it allows the researcher to fix certain relationships to zero and others to vary. The direction of the paths proposed in the model is determined by theoretical assumptions; significance of the coefficients and model fit do not indicate causality. The statistical program SPSS AMOS21 was used to test the hypothesized paths from skills to engagement.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by Masaryk University, [MUNI/E/1347/2017] and the Czech Science Foundation [GA15-05696S].