ORIGINAL RESEARCH article
Front. Psychiatry
Sec. Public Mental Health
Volume 16 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/fpsyt.2025.1662888
This article is part of the Research TopicExecutive Functions, Reward Systems and Addiction in Adolescents and Young AdultsView all 9 articles
The Longitudinal Relationship Between School Climate and Internet Gaming Addiction Among Chinese Children: A Moderated Mediation Model
Provisionally accepted
- 1Guangzhou Maritime University, Guangzhou, China
- 2Guangzhou Preschool Teachers College, guangzhou, China
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Introduction: School climate is associated with children's Internet gaming addiction; however, the mechanisms underlying this association have been largely unexplored. Based on the ecological systems theory, the social learning theory, and the diathesis-stress model, we examined the association between school climate and children's Internet gaming addiction, as well as the mediating role of deviant peer affiliation and the moderating role of sensation seeking in this relationship. Methods: The study involved 419 Chinese children participating in a two-wave longitudinal investigation conducted over the course of one year. Among the participants, 54.4% were boys and 45.6% were girls. The mean age of the participants at Wave 1 was 10.70 years (SD = 0.58). We used SPSS 27.0 to generate descriptive statistics and correlations. We adopted Model 4 of the PROCESS for SPSS to examine the mediation model. We used Model 14 of the PROCESS for SPSS to examine the moderated mediation models. Results: The results showed that school climate was negatively correlated with Internet gaming addiction among children one year later. Deviant peer affiliation mediated the pathway from school climate to Internet gaming addiction, and this mediating pathway was moderated by sensation seeking. Conclusion: These findings demonstrated the individual differences in the association between school climate and Internet gaming addiction, which has implications for the prevention of Internet gaming addiction among children.
Keywords: Children, School Climate, deviant peer affiliation, sensation seeking, Internet gaming addiction
Received: 09 Jul 2025; Accepted: 20 Aug 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Wei and Xu. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence: Qian Xu, Guangzhou Preschool Teachers College, guangzhou, China
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