PSYCHOLOGICAL FACTORS RELATED TO PROBLEMATIC INTERNET AND SMARTPHONE USE

Abstract

In today’s world, Internet and smartphones have become an essential part of our lives. Besides their advantages, there are also some drawbacks regarding their usage. To investigate these drawbacks, problematic Internet and smartphone use has been separately investigated within the scope of behavioral addiction in the literature. In parallel to this, present study aims to investigate the relationship between problematic Internet and smartphone use and psychological factors that were related to diverse addictive disorders in a Turkish sample. It was hypothesized that emotion regulation, self-control, depression and social anxiety symptoms, and novelty seeking would predict problematic Internet and smartphone use. Data was collected from 337 adults between the ages of 18 and 66 (M = 28.86, SD = 9.72). The results showed that although social anxiety and depression symptoms as well as low self-control predict problematic Internet and smartphone use; novelty seeking predicts only problematic smartphone use. Additionally, difficulties in emotion regulation did not predict problematic Internet and smartphone use.

Keywords

• problematic internet use
• problematic smartphone use
• social anxiety symptoms
• depression symptoms
• novelty seeking