A Short-Term Longitudinal Study of Internet and Computer Game Use by Adolescent Boys and Girls: Prevalence, Frequency of Use, and Psychosocial Predictors Teena Willoughby Brock University Prevalence, frequency, and psychosocial predictors of Internet and computer game use were assessed with 803 male and 788 female adolescents across 2 time periods, 21 months apart. At Time 1, participants were in the 9th or 10th grade; at Time 2, they were in the 11th or 12th grade. Most girls (93.7%) and boys (94.7%) reported using the Internet at both time periods, whereas more boys (80.3%) than girls (28.8%) reported gaming at both time periods. Girls reported a small decrease over time in the frequency of hours spent per day on overall technology use, mostly due to a decrease in gaming. Both linear and curvilinear relations were examined between parental relationships, friendship quality, academic orientation, and well-being measured in early high school and the frequency of technology use in late high school. Being male significantly predicted both computer gaming and Internet use. There also were trends in favor of higher friendship quality and less positive parental relationships predicting higher frequency of Internet use. Importantly, moderate use of the Internet was associated with a more positive academic orientation than nonuse or high levels of use. Keywords: Internet use, computer game use, psychosocial adjustment, adolescence, gender Technology is an increasingly important cognitive and social- ization agent for contemporary youth (Arnett, 1995). In fact, most adolescents today have access to a variety of technologies such as computers, the Internet, and computer games, with the latter in- cluding computer games and games played on platforms like the Microsoft Xbox, Nintendo GameCube, or Sony PlayStation, as well as hand-held, arcade, and cell phone games. Although some attention has been paid to the potential negative effects of exces- sive Internet and computer game use, understanding why adoles- cents differ in their involvement in technology use is, for the most part, still in its infancy. There have been clear indications, how- ever, that playing computer games and using the Internet can be both positive and negative for adolescents. For example, concerns have been raised about excessive technology use, particularly because of the relation found between repeated playing of violent computer games and aggressive behavior (e.g., Anderson & Bush- man, 2001), but researchers also have hypothesized that computer use may be an important positive agent for cognitive and social development. For example, computer use has been linked to in- creased visual intelligence skills (Subrahmanyam, Kraut, Green- field, & Gross, 2000). Examining the full spectrum of frequency of use (i.e., from nonuse to excessive use), then, is critical. The present study addresses this issue by examining prevalence, fre- quency, and psychosocial predictors of Internet and computer game use among adolescent boys and girls across two time periods (i.e., early and late high school). The potential benefits of computer use for cognitive development, in particular, have often been raised. Parents report buying computers to enhance their children’s educational opportunities and to prepare them for the “information age” (Turow, 1999). Although parents report being worried about the content of their children’s television, gaming, and Internet activities, they also appear to embrace comput- ers and the Internet as valuable learning tools (Turow, 1999). Simi- larly, educators support the use of technology for learning activities (Wood, Mueller, Willoughby, Specht, & DeYoung, 2005). Indeed, computers often are used at home to help children with their school- work (Subrahmanyam et al., 2000). Furthermore, computer games have been shown to enhance children’s spatial performance skills and have been positively related to reading skills and academic perfor- mance (Nichols, 1992; Subrahmanyam & Greenfield, 1994). Given the rapidly increasing prevalence of computer use among children and adolescents, more work is needed to determine the relation of tech- nology use to cognitive development. In the past, there was concern that spending time playing computer games and using the Internet may lead to increasing levels of social isolation. For example, Lanthier and Windham (2004) found that self-reported negative aspects of Internet use (e.g., negative thoughts, feelings, and experiences) were associated with poor college adjust- ment. Increased use of the Internet has been reported to be related to higher levels of loneliness and depression (Amichai-Hamburger & Ben-Artzi, 2003; Moody, 2001; Ybarra, Alexander, & Mitchell, 2005). Moreover, Kraut et al. (1998) found that Internet use was associated with small but significant declines in both well-being and the size of the adolescents’ social circle over a period of 2 years. In a follow-up study, however, Kraut et al. (2002) found that most of the negative effects had dissipated. More recently, Gross (2004) found no associations between Internet usage and well-being in a sample of 7th and 10th grade students. Funding was received from the Social Sciences and Humanities Re- search Council of Canada. Correspondence concerning this article should be addressed to Teena Willoughby, Department of Child and Youth Studies, Brock University, St. Catharines, Ontario L2S 3A1, Canada. E-mail: twilloug@brocku.ca Developmental Psychology Copyright 2008 by the American Psychological Association 2008, Vol. 44, No. 1, 195–204 0012-1649/08/$12.00 DOI: 10.1037/0012-1649.44.1.195 195