The unique and interactive effects of callous-unemotional traits and internalizing emotion problems in the association to adolescents' generalized problematic Internet use

The present study was realized to explore the unique and interactive effects of callous-unemotional traits (i.e., CU traits) and internalizing emotion problems in the association to generalized problematic Internet use (i.e., GPIU). 608 community sample adolescents (272 girls, mean age = 16.70 years, DS = 1.66 years) were recruited. Unique positive associations between CU traits and GPIU and between internalizing emotion problems and GPIU emerged. Moreover, these associations were qualified by a significant interaction term between CU traits and internalizing emotion problems: CU traits were positively associated to GPIU in adolescents high (vs. low) in internalizing emotion problems. In other terms, the likeability to have high levels of GPIU was quite low in adolescents low in internalizing emotion problems, irrespectively of their level of CU traits; in contrast, adolescent students high in internalizing emotion problems showed higher levels of GPIU if they were also high on CU traits. These preliminary results allow us to speculate that there may be different patterns to GPIU in adolescence, with individuals high in both CU traits and internalizing emotion problems (i.e., the so-called secondary variant of CU traits) presenting cumulative risk factors for the development of an unhealthy approach to the use of the Internet medium.