Abstract
Adolescents’ increased use of smartphones associates with stress and anxiety. Recently studies have examined mediating psychological constructs accounting for relations between stress and problematic smartphone use severity. The current cross-sectional study aimed to analyze anxiety and smartphone use frequency as possible mediators between stress and problematic smartphone use. We recruited 7681 Chinese adolescents (54.58% female) by cluster sampling via a web-based survey that measured stress, anxiety (Depression Anxiety Stress Scale-21, DASS-21), problematic smartphone use (Smartphone addiction scale-short version, SAS-SV), and smartphone use frequency (Smartphone use frequency scale, SUF). For adolescents, stress was significantly associated with problematic smartphone use severity (r = 0.52, p < 0.01). Anxiety and the smartphone use frequency mediated relations between stress and problematic smartphone use severity. In the final model, anxiety and smartphone use frequency played a serial mediating role between stress and problematic smartphone use severity. Adolescent stress has a positively related to problematic smartphone use severity, both directly and indirectly, through their anxiety and smartphone use frequency. Thus, future research should focus on adolescents’ anxiety and its association with smartphone use frequency.
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Data and survey materials will be made available upon request.
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Funding
This study received a grant from the Tianjin Key Project of Philosophy and Social Sciences(TJJX21-001).
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Contributions
Haibo Yang and Zihao Wang designed the study protocol. Haibo Yang conducted data collection. Zihao Wang conducted data management, cleaning, and analysis. Zihao Wang wrote the first draft of the paper. Haibo Yang and Jon D. Elhai substantially revised the manuscript.
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Informed consent was obtained from all participants, while parents’ permission was also obtained for those less than 18 years of age. The procedures were carried out in accordance with the Declaration of Helsinki. The ethical approval for this study was also obtained from the ethics committee of Tianjin Normal University (No. XL2020-21).
Conflict of Interest
All authors declare that they have no conflicts of interest with this study. However, outside the scope of the present paper, the authors report the following…
Dr. Haibo Yang notes that he is a paid full-time faculty member at Tianjin Normal University.
Mr. Zihao Wang notes that he is a doctoral student at Tianjin Normal University.
Dr. Elhai notes that he receives royalties for several books published on posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD); is a paid, full-time faculty member at University of Toledo; occasionally serves as a paid, expert witness on PTSD legal cases; and has recently received grant research funding from the U.S. National Institutes of Health.
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Highlights
• Adolescent stress is a positive correlate of problematic smartphone use (PSU) severity.
• Anxiety and the smartphone use frequency play a serial mediating role between adolescent stress and PSU severity.
• This is a large-scale questionnaire survey of Chinese adolescents.
Implications and Contribution
Adolescents perceiving more stress reported more problematic smartphone use severity. Their anxiety and smartphone use frequency play a serial mediating role in this relationship. Findings raise concerns about adolescent problematic smartphone use and their behavior habits.
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Yang, H., Wang, Z. & Elhai, J.D. The relationship between adolescent stress and problematic smartphone use: The serial mediating effects of anxiety and frequency of smartphone use. Curr Psychol 42, 7867–7874 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12144-022-03197-6
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s12144-022-03197-6