青少年智能手机问题性使用与焦虑的交叉滞后分析

The Relationship Between Anxiety Symptoms and Problematic Smartphone Use among Teenagers: A Cross-Lagged Regression Analysis

对393名高中生进行10个月的纵向追踪,采用问卷法考察青少年智能手机问题性使用与焦虑之间的关系。结果发现:青少年智能手机问题性使用与焦虑水平随着时间推移有增加的趋势;青少年智能手机问题性使用与焦虑显著正相关;前测焦虑水平能够显著预测后测智能手机问题性使用程度,而前测智能手机问题性使用程度不能显著预测后测焦虑水平,且这一预测关系存在性别差异。

The smartphone has many characteristics, such as portability and interactivity, which make it very attractive, especially among adolescents. Problematic smartphone use(PSU) is similar to Internet addiction. It is an abuse of smartphones, resulting in a strong and sustained sense of dependence on mobile phones, leading to users’ obsession with obvious impairment of their psychological and social functions. It is considered that teenagers are at a special stage of physiological and psychological development;they lack resistance to attractive new things like smartphones. The uncontrolled, inappropriate or excessive use of the smartphone can give rise to social, behavioral and affective problems such as anxiety. However, the current research on teenagers’ problematic smartphone use and anxiety symptom mostly use horizontal design, which fails to reveal the causal relationship between the two variables. In addition, more and more researchers pay attention to the problem use of different gender mobile phone users. Plenty of researches showed that male and female have different performance in problematic smartphone use. To explore the causal relationship between teenagers’ problematic smartphone use and anxiety symptom, as well as the gender difference in the predictive relationship between and problematic smartphone use and anxiety, the present study used a cross-lagged path model/method. The scale used in the present study was revised problematic smartphone use inventory and self-rating anxiety scale. The participants came from two high schools of Shanghai, the first measuring time was 2016-1-26, and the second measuring was carried out ten months later. After measuring for two times, 393 valid participants were obtained after removing the extreme and invalid values. The valid participants including 160 males and 233 females, the average age of the high school students is 15.00(SD= 1.48). The SPSS 23.0 and AMOS 21.0 were used for data analysis. A correlation analysis was done for the lateral and vertical correlation between problematic smartphone use and anxiety, the analysis of teenagers’ problematic smartphone use and anxiety symptom were done using the repeated measures ANOVA, the cross-lagged relationship between problematic smartphone use and anxiety was analyzed using SPSS 23.0. We could thus see the changes in problematic smartphone use and anxiety during the ten months, and find the causal relationship between problematic smartphone use and anxiety. The results indicate that:(1) The anxiety symptom at T1 and T2 are positively correlated, and the problematic smartphone use at T1 and T2 are positively correlated.(2) Anxiety symptom and problematic smartphone use are positively correlated. The anxiety symptom at T1 and the problematic smartphone use at T1 are positively correlated. The anxiety symptom at T1 and the problematic smartphone use at T2 are positively correlated. The problematic smartphone use at T1 and the anxiety symptom at T2 are positively correlated. The problematic smartphone use at T2 and the anxiety symptom at T2 are positively correlated.(3) In the total sample, cross-lagged regression analysis indicates that the anxiety symptom at T1 could predict the problematic smartphone use at T2, but the problematic smartphone use at T1 could not predict the anxiety symptom at T2.(4) The gender difference in the one-way predictive effect of adolescent anxiety on the problematic use of smartphones is significant, which is consistent with previous studies. In conclusion: Teenagers’ anxiety symptom is closely related to their problematic smartphone use, and the relationship between teenagers’ problematic smartphone use and anxiety symptom in high school is unidirectional causation in the ten months. To be more specific, the anxiety symptom at T1 can significantly predict the problematic smartphone use at T2. We can intervene in the teenagers’ problematic smartphone use and anxiety symptom by helping them to find the appropriate solutions.