Investigating Links Between Fear of COVID-19, Neuroticism, Social Networks Use Disorder, and Smartphone Use Disorder Tendencies

Frontiers in Psychology

article

Christian Montag¹  Cornelia Sindermann¹  Dmitri Rozgonjuk¹  Shixin Yang⁴  Jon D. Elhai⁶  Haibo Yang⁴ 

[1] Department of Molecular Psychology, Institute of Psychology and Education, Ulm University;The Clinical Hospital of Chengdu Brain Science Institute, MOE Key Lab for Neuroinformation, University of Electronic Science and Technology of China;Institute of Mathematics and Statistics, University of Tartu;Faculty of Psychology, Tianjin Normal University;School of Psychology, Guizhou Normal University;Department of Psychology, and Department of Psychiatry, University of Toledo, United States

关键词: COVID-19 pandemic;    fear of COVID-19;    social media addiction;    smartphone addiction;    Bergen social media addiction scale;    smartphone addiction scale;    neuroticism;    personality;   

DOI  :  10.3389/fpsyg.2021.682837

学科分类：社会科学、人文和艺术（综合）

来源: Frontiers

【 摘 要 】

The present study investigates links between fear of COVID-19, the personality trait of neuroticism, social networks use disorder, and smartphone use disorder (SNUD and SmUD, respectively) tendencies. In an online survey, N = 932 participants recruited at a Chinese University (237 males and 695 females) completed self-reports on fear of COVID-19, neuroticism (and other personality traits from the Big Five Inventory-44), the Bergen Social Media Addiction Scale (assessing tendencies toward SNUD), and the Smartphone Addiction Scale short version—assessing individual differences in tendencies toward SmUD. Our findings showed that all variables of main interest were positively correlated with each other. A mediation model suggested that SNUD (in parts) mediated the association between fear of COVID-19 and SmUD. Although neuroticism was robustly correlated with all mentioned variables, no moderation effect could be observed on the investigated fear-of-COVID-19-SNUD-link. The findings of this work provide further evidence that the smartphone itself is only a device giving individuals access to software applications, which might be excessively used. Beyond that, the present data indicate neuroticism to be a risk factor with respect to fear of COVID-19, SNUD, and SmUD, although the study is limited by its cross-sectional study design.

【 授权许可】

CC BY