Stable Co-Occurrence and Time-Specific Within-Person Associations Among Depressive Symptoms, Fear of Negative Evaluation, and Problematic Internet Use in Chinese Adolescents

With the internet becoming increasingly integrated into adolescents’ lives, problematic internet use (PIU) is closely associated with their psychological adjustment. However, the longitudinal relationships between PIU, depressive symptoms (DS), and fear of negative evaluation (FNE) remain unclear. Therefore, based on three-wave longitudinal data from a convenience sample of 1062 Chinese adolescents (among those with available age data, ages ranged from 11 to 16 years; M = 13.71, SD = 1.58) in three secondary schools in Guangzhou, China, this study employed a random-intercept cross-lagged panel model to examine the longitudinal associations between PIU, DS, and FNE, and further tested gender differences in the structural pathways. Valid data on at least one core study variable were available for 1060, 881, and 883 participants at T1, T2, and T3, respectively. PIU, DS, and FNE were significantly positively associated at the between-person level, suggesting a stable co-occurrence of these three constructs among Chinese adolescents. However, they did not form stable, reciprocal within-person longitudinal associations across the two measurement intervals; instead, the significant associations were specific to particular intervals. Specifically, higher-than-usual PIU at T1 was associated with higher subsequent DS at T2, and higher-than-usual DS at T2 was associated with higher subsequent PIU and FNE at T3; in contrast, FNE was not significantly associated with subsequent PIU in either of the two adjacent time periods. Exploratory multigroup analysis did not provide evidence of an overall gender difference in structural paths. These findings preliminarily suggest that understanding adolescent PIU may benefit from distinguishing between stable between-person patterns across the observed study period and time-specific within-person changes.