Relationship between mobile phone addiction and anxiety among college students： the acting path of loneliness

Abstract

BackgroundAnxiety exists as a prevalent psychological problem among college students nowadays， which brings negative influence on their normal life. Mobile phone addiction and loneliness both have an impact on college students' anxiety. However， the acting path of loneliness between mobile phone addiction and anxiety requires further exploration.ObjectiveTo analyze the relationships among mobile phone addiction， loneliness and anxiety in college students， and to explore the acting path of loneliness between mobile phone addiction and anxiety.MethodsOn December 21， 2023， 1 400 college students from a university in Henan Province were selected， in accordance with the simple random sampling method， for investigation of this study. Questionnaire survey was conducted by using several scales including Mobile Phone Addiction Tendency Scale （MPATS）， Self-rating Anxiety Scale （SAS） and University of California Los Angeles-Loneliness Scale （UCLA-LS）. Pearson correlation analysis was used to examine the correlation between the scores of each scale above， and SPSS macro program Process 3.3 was used to test the mediation effect.ResultsA total of 1 239 valid questionnaires were collected， with an effective recovery rate of 88.50%. The MPATS score of college students was positively correlated with both SAS and UCLA-LS scores （r=0.474， 0.387， P<0.01）， and UCLA-LS score was positively correlated with SAS score （r=0.541， P<0.01）. The indirect effect of loneliness between mobile phone addiction and anxiety was 0.160 （95% CI： 0.118~0.173）， accounting for 33.97% of the total effect.ConclusionMobile phone addiction can positively predict anxiety among college students， and loneliness may act as the mediation path between mobile phone addiction and anxiety among college students.

Keywords

• college students
• mobile phone addiction
• anxiety
• loneliness