A person’s use of Web services for escapist purposes is thought to split his or her world into online and real versions, which differ greatly, increasing potential addiction tendencies and eventually leading to harmful consequences for the individual in his or her daily life. In this study, we conducted a questionnaire survey targeting Tokyo metropolitan high school students (n = 15,191), and used path analysis to clarify the structure of the model wherein psychological distress leads to harmful consequences through Internet escapism and potential Internet addiction tendencies, each serve as intermediary factors mediating the effect of psychological distress on harmful consequences. As a result, we derived the Psychological Distress-Escapism-Addiction-Harmful Consequences (Escapism-Addiction) model. Psychological distress influenced Internet escapism (0.42), Internet escapism influenced potential Internet addiction tendencies (0.61) and potential Internet addiction tendencies influenced harmful consequences (0.71). This made it possible to quantitatively reveal the structure of Internet escapism, whereby escaping psychological distress by engaging in online activities increased tendencies toward potential Internet dependency and had an adverse impact on the concerned individual’s daily life.
Authors: Shiroh Ohno
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1080/17542863.2016.1226911
Publish Year: 2016
