Longitudinal association between bullying and internet gaming disorder among Chinese adolescents: A cross-lagged...

Both bullying and internet gaming disorder have negative impacts on adolescents. It is important to understand the longitudinal relationship between them. Network analysis was used in the current study, which treated bullying and internet gaming disorder as symptom networks to obtain the symptom level analysis between the two variable communities. A total of 1026 middle school adolescents (46 % females) completed the measurements of all variables at three time points over 12 months. The results showed that "cyberbullying victimization" and "deception" were the most influential bridge nodes in cross-sectional networks. In longitudinal cross-lag networks, bullying functioned as an independent predictor of internet gaming disorder, rather than an outcome. Cyberbullying victimization and perpetration exerted different effects on internet gaming disorder, with victimization predicting the "negative consequences" while perpetration predicting "loss of control". "Giving up other activities" and "Escape" were the most affected symptoms for the two longitudinal cross-lagged networks, respectively. The results provide a target for prevention and intervention of adolescent internet gaming disorder.