Accepted for/Published in: Journal of Medical Internet Research
Date Submitted: Jan 30, 2026
Date Accepted: Jul 27, 2026
Social Connectedness Buffering the Interaction Between Problematic Internet Use and Psychopathological Symptoms Among Adolescents: Undirected and Bayesian Network Analyses
ABSTRACT
Background:
Problematic Internet use (PIU) in adolescents often co-occurs with psychopathological symptoms. Social connectedness (SC) is a potential protective factor for both PIU and psychopathological symptoms, but how SC interacts with the PIU-psychopathology system remains unclear.
Objective:
This study aimed to delineate the factor-level comorbidity network linking PIU with psychopathological symptoms among adolescents with moderate-to-severe PIU, and to clarify how offline and online SC functions in this system. We further explored potential directional pathways to identify early prevention targets.
Methods:
This multi-center study included 9407 adolescents aged 12-18 years from four provinces in China. PIU, depression, anxiety, irritability, repetitive thoughts and behaviors, anger, aggression, and social connectedness were assessed. We estimated an undirected factor-level symptom network and a directed acyclic graph (DAG) derived from a Bayesian network structure to characterize associations and conditional dependency structure among SC, PIU, and eight psychopathological symptoms.
Results:
The integrative symptom network encompassing PIU, internalizing and externalizing symptoms, and social connectedness (PIU-IES) showed great stability and accuracy. Anxiety, anger, and depression were identified as central bridging symptoms that reinforce the interplay between PIU and other psychopathological symptoms. Offline SC exhibited the highest number of negative edges and the highest bridge expected influence value, followed by online SC. In the DAG network, offline SC was positioned as an upstream contextual factor with pathways to both externalizing (aggression, irritability) and internalizing (depression, anxiety) symptoms.
Conclusions:
PIU and psychopathological symptoms exhibit a mutual reinforcement relationship, which could be alleviated by offline SC. Offline SC is a key protective bridge and a plausible upstream factor of the PIU-IES network. Strengthening offline SC may therefore represent a promising intervention and prevention target to mitigate PIU-related comorbidity and reduce the risk of more severe clinical outcomes.
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