How Peer Victimization in Childhood Affects Social Networking Addiction in Adulthood: An Examination of the Mediating Roles of Social Anxiety and Perceived Loneliness

Research to date has rarely addressed the association between peer victimization in childhood and social networking addiction in adulthood, much less the internal mechanism underlying that association. By integrating the relational self-system processes model and the cognitive–behavioral model of pathological internet use, our study marked an initial effort to explore whether social anxiety and perceived loneliness independently and/or sequentially mediate the impact of peer victimization on social networking addiction. Using school-based random cluster sampling, we recruited 1,136 students at various colleges in eastern, central, and western China (mean age = 21.98 years, 56.2% women) to complete an online survey. The results confirmed social anxiety’s single mediation effect, perceived loneliness’s single mediation effect, and the serial mediation effect of social anxiety and perceived loneliness between peer victimization and social networking addiction. The findings suggest that certain psychopathological and cognitive factors mediate the effect of peer victimization in childhood on individuals’ symptoms of social networking addiction in adulthood both independently and sequentially. Our research contributes to clarifying how interpersonal stressors lead to psychopathological symptoms, maladaptive cognitions, and, in turn, addictive behavior, which has important implications for theory, interventions, and future research.