Offline Social and Civic Engagement Linked to Lower Internet Addiction in Chinese Teens

Adolescents who spend more time on offline social and civic activities report lower levels of internet addiction, according to a large cross-sectional study of secondary school students in China. The research, published in Child and Adolescent Psychiatry and Mental Health, examined how everyday offline social environments relate to adolescents’ digital well-being at both the individual and classroom levels.

Internet addiction has become a growing mental-health concern during adolescence, yet prior research has focused largely on individual and family-related risk factors. The study’s authors set out to address a gap in that literature: how adolescents’ offline social and civic engagement, or OSCE, relates to problematic internet use, and whether socio-emotional competence helps explain that relationship.

The analysis drew on survey data collected in Spring 2025 from 7,121 secondary school students nested within 329 classrooms across five regions of China. Because students were clustered in classrooms, the researchers used multilevel modeling to examine associations between OSCE, socio-emotional competence, and internet addiction while accounting for that classroom-level clustering.

The central finding was consistent across levels of analysis. Higher offline social and civic engagement was associated with lower internet addiction at both the individual level and the classroom level. In other words, students who personally participated more in offline activities reported less problematic internet use, and classrooms with a stronger overall engagement climate also showed lower average levels of internet addiction.

That classroom-level result is notable because it suggests that broader engagement climates may be associated with adolescents’ digital behaviors beyond individual participation alone. A student’s own offline activity was not the only factor at play; the collective engagement environment of the classroom appeared to carry its own association with digital habits.

Socio-emotional competence also emerged as part of the picture. The study found that socio-emotional competence partly explained the association between offline engagement and internet addiction at the within-class level, meaning that some of the relationship between offline participation and lower problematic internet use operated through adolescents’ socio-emotional skills.

Beyond the multilevel models, the researchers applied machine-learning analyses using accumulated local effects plots to probe whether the relationship between offline engagement and internet addiction was uniform across different contexts. These analyses revealed nonlinear patterns in the association across academic and family contexts, with stronger negative associations observed under conditions of higher academic pressure and more supportive parent-child relationships.

The authors conclude that the findings support an ecological perspective on adolescent digital well-being, in which offline participation contexts and socio-emotional competencies are associated with lower problematic internet use. They suggest that structured offline social and civic engagement may represent an important social-contextual correlate of healthier digital engagement among adolescents.

Several caveats are important for interpreting these results. The data are cross-sectional, collected at a single point in time, so the study cannot establish that offline engagement causes lower internet addiction; adolescents with less problematic internet use may simply find it easier to participate in offline activities, or other unmeasured factors may explain the association. All measures come from self-reported surveys of secondary school students in China, and the article was released as an accepted manuscript ahead of final editorial processing, so the version is subject to further edits. Within those limits, the study adds multilevel evidence that the social environments adolescents inhabit offline, from their own activities to the engagement climate of their classrooms, are meaningfully associated with how they engage with the internet.

Subject of Research: Associations between offline social and civic engagement and adolescent internet addiction in China

Article Title: Offline social and civic engagement as an ecological correlate of adolescent internet addiction: multilevel evidence from Chinese adolescents

Article References: Ma, C., Shen, Y., Chen, M., & Yang, Y. (2026). Offline social and civic engagement as an ecological correlate of adolescent internet addiction: multilevel evidence from Chinese adolescents. Child and Adolescent Psychiatry and Mental Health. https://doi.org/10.1186/s13034-026-01197-z

Image Credits: AI Generated

DOI: 10.1186/s13034-026-01197-z

Keywords: internet addiction, adolescents, offline engagement, civic participation, socio-emotional competence, classroom climate, multilevel modeling, cross-sectional study, digital well-being, China, machine learning, mental health