ORIGINAL RESEARCH article
Front. Psychol.
Sec. Addictive Behaviors
Volume 16 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2025.1654839
Internet addiction influences life satisfaction through social support among Chinese college students: A moderated mediation model of grit
Provisionally accepted- 1Software Engineering Institute of Guangzhou, Guangzhou, China
- 2Hanseo University, Seosan-si, Republic of Korea
Select one of your emails
You have multiple emails registered with Frontiers:
Notify me on publication
Please enter your email address:
If you already have an account, please login
You don't have a Frontiers account ? You can register here
The prevalence of Internet addiction among college students has gained significant attention in recent years. Research has established a negative relationship between Internet addiction and life satisfaction, although the underlying mechanisms are not fully understood. The present study aims to examine the relationship between Internet addiction, grit, social support, and life satisfaction. A random sampling method was used to recruit 304 Chinese college students to complete a questionnaire that included measures of Young's Internet Addiction Scale, Multidimensional Scale of Perceived Social Support, Satisfaction with Life Scale, and 12-Item Grit Scale. For data analysis, SPSS, PROCESS macro and AMOS 23 were used to conduct confirmatory factor analysis, descriptive statistics analysis, reliability analysis, correlation analysis, and moderated mediation analysis. The results revealed that Internet addiction was negatively correlated with life satisfaction, and social support plays a mediating role between them. Moreover, grit moderated the mediation effect of social support in the relationship between Internet addiction and life satisfaction. This suggests that Internet addicts with higher levels of grit are less likely to experience a significant decline in social support. The study provides a deeper insight into the mechanisms through which Internet addiction hampers life satisfaction, suggesting that the influence may be channeled through social support. However, fostering a strong sense of grit could serve as a protective factor against the adverse impacts of internet addiction on life satisfaction. The broader implications for both research and practical applications in the field are subsequently elaborated.
Keywords: Internet addiction, social support, life satisfaction, grit, Chinese college students
Received: 27 Jun 2025; Accepted: 06 Oct 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Ma, Li and Lee. 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: Tingting Ma, mtt_career@163.com
Disclaimer: All claims expressed in this article are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of their affiliated organizations, or those of the publisher, the editors and the reviewers. Any product that may be evaluated in this article or claim that may be made by its manufacturer is not guaranteed or endorsed by the publisher.