Associations between internet addiction and academic stress among college students: a sequential mediation model involving social anxiety and self-control

Abstract

To explore how Internet addiction is associated with college students’ academic stress and how self-control and social anxiety play a mediating role in this relationship. Using stratified sampling, 230 college students aged 18–22 years old from multiple universities in Hefei, Anhui Province, were recruited. All participants completed four standardized questionnaires. Serial mediation analysis based on SPSS PROCESS Model 6 with bias-corrected percentile Bootstrap (5,000 resamples) was adopted to test the hypothesized mediating effects. The findings of this research indicate that Internet addiction is correlated with multiple indicators of college students’ academic stress. (1) Self-control and social anxiety each statistically mediate the association between Internet addiction and academic stress. (2) Social anxiety and self-control form a sequential pathway that statistically mediates the association linking Internet addiction and academic stress. These correlational results suggest that greater offline social engagement and stronger self-control may be related to lower levels of academic stress and less Internet addiction among university students.