Abstract: The Internet brings about the adolescents an exciting and colorful recreation world. Meanwhile, the pathological Internet use (PIU) among adolescents has caught some attention. It is believed that both the individual factors of adolescents and the functions of the Internet are related to the PIU. Separation- individuation is a very important developmental task which is presumed to have significant adaptational consequences for adolescents. The imaginary audience ideation is considered to serve defensive functions in separation- individuation process. The present research examined the relations between the separation- individuation, imaginary audience, preference of the Internet recreation service, and PIU among Chinese adolescents.
The present study conducted a questionnaire survey with Chinese adolescents (n=332). The separation- individuation was measured by the reduced version of Separation-Individuation Test of Adolescence (SITA), which was reduced and revised by Italian researchers Ingoglia, Inguglia, and Liga, et al. (2004) . (The SITA was developed by Levine, Green, and Millon, et al., 1986). The imaginary audience was measured by the New Imaginary Audience Scale, which was developed by Lapsley et al. (1989). In present study, the Adolescent Preference of the Internet Service Scales (Lei & Liu, 2005) and the Adolescent Pathological Internet Use Scale(Lei & Yang, 2006) were used to measure the preference of the Internet recreation service and PIU of the adolescents, respectively. And the data was analyzed with SPSS 12.0 and Amos 4.0
The results indicate that (1) both the preference of the Internet recreation service and the PIU among the male students are significantly higher than the female; (2) both the separation anxiety and the rejection expectancy could predict PIU positively; (3) the preference of the Internet recreation service could predict PIU; (4) the imaginary audience ideation could predict PIU; (5) the engulfment anxiety could predict PIU indirectly through the Internet Recreation service Preference; (6) both the self- involvement and separation anxiety could predict PIU indirectly through the imaginary audience ideation.
Lanthier and Windham (2004) argued whether the Internet use was addictive or non-addictive was depended on the users’ individual factors and their attitude to the Internet use. The findings of the present study support their view. The results indicate that the special developmental task, separation-individuation, the imaginary audience ideation during adolescence, and the preference Internet recreation service work together to predict the adolescents’ PIU

Key words: adolescents, separation-individuation, imaginary audience, recreational service of Internet, PIU