An Evaluation of Two Characterizations of the Relationships Between Problematic Internet Use, Time Spent Using the Internet, and Psychosocial Problems

This article reports tests of the relationships between problematic Internet use (PIU), time spent using the Internet, and psychosocial problems from the two perspectives. Ten individual meta-analyses were first conducted to identify weighted mean correlations among the five variables included within the models. The correlations derived from the meta-analyses were subsequently used in path analysis to test the alternative characterizations. The results offer some support for the deficient self-regulation model but provide relatively little evidence consistent with the pathology perspective of PIU.