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How does adolescents and college students’ personal relative deprivation affect mobile phone dependence? The mediating roles of stress and fear of missing out

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Problematic mobile phone use is a common phenomenon for adolescents and college students, which seriously harms students` physical and mental health. Why were students caught in problematic mobile phone use? Some subtle psychology process which involves personal relative deprivation, stress, and fear of missing out, may be crucial. To reveal the psychological process, this study used a cross-sectional survey design to explore the associations among variables mentioned above and problematic mobile phone use of adolescents and college students in China. We recruited 863 participants (Mage = 18.70, SD = 2.15) which contain 330 middle school students (Mage = 16.33, SD = 1.36) and 533 college students (Mage = 20.06, SD = 1.06) in the study. The results shown that: (1) personal relative deprivation can predict problematic mobile phone use; (2) stress and fear of missing out serve as parallel mediating roles between personal relative deprivation and problematic mobile phone use. These findings demonstrate the psychological process through which personal relative deprivation contributes to problematic mobile phone use, suggesting that managing stress and alleviating fear of missing out may be beneficial countermeasures to prevent and/or intervene in problematic mobile phone use of adolescents and college students.
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Current Psychology
https://doi.org/10.1007/s12144-024-06744-5
Introduction
The number of Chinese cyber citizens using mobile devices
in December 2023, compared to that of in December 2022,
has increased by 25.62 million, reaching 1.09 billion, and
99.7% of the cyber users enjoyed online service by mobile
phones (China Internet Network Information Center &
CINIC, 2024). In order to meet people's dierent demands
for entertainment, life services, and information acquisition,
the smartphone, as a convenient and crucial terminal device,
is constantly updated functions. However, while benet-
ing from the exceptional convenience of cellular devices,
certain issues, such as reliance on mobile phones, deserve
special attention. According to the 53rd National Underage
Internet Use Survey Report released by CINIC (2024), the
Internet penetration rate of underage Internet users in China
is 97.2%, the proportion of using mobile phones reach
91.3%, the proportion of playing mobile games is 62.8%,
and the proportion of underage netizens who think they are
Honghan Li
psylhh@126.com
1 Department of Psychology, Faculty of Education, Guangxi
Normal University, Guilin, China
2 Guangxi University and College Key Laboratory of
Cognitive Neuroscience and Applied Psychology, Guilin,
China
3 Jiangxi Administrative Vocational College, Nanchang, China
4 Faculty of Psychology, Beijing Normal University, Beijing,
China
5 Guangxi Vocational College of Water Resources and Electric
Power, Nanning, China
6 Guangxi International Business Vocational College, Nanning,
China
Abstract
Problematic mobile phone use is a common phenomenon for adolescents and college students, which seriously harms stu-
dents` physical and mental health. Why were students caught in problematic mobile phone use? Some subtle psychology
process which involves personal relative deprivation, stress, and fear of missing out, may be crucial. To reveal the psy-
chological process, this study used a cross-sectional survey design to explore the associations among variables mentioned
above and problematic mobile phone use of adolescents and college students in China. We recruited 863 participants (Mage
= 18.70, SD = 2.15) which contain 330 middle school students (Mage = 16.33, SD = 1.36) and 533 college students (Mage
= 20.06, SD = 1.06) in the study. The results shown that: (1) personal relative deprivation can predict problematic mobile
phone use; (2) stress and fear of missing out serve as parallel mediating roles between personal relative deprivation and
problematic mobile phone use. These ndings demonstrate the psychological process through which personal relative
deprivation contributes to problematic mobile phone use, suggesting that managing stress and alleviating fear of missing
out may be benecial countermeasures to prevent and/or intervene in problematic mobile phone use of adolescents and
college students.
Keywords Mobile phone dependence · Personal relative deprivation · Stress · Fear of missing out · Adolescents and
college students
Accepted: 17 September 2024
© The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer Science+Business Media, LLC, part of Springer Nature 2024
How does adolescents and college students’ personal relative
deprivation aect mobile phone dependence? The mediating roles of
stress and fear of missing out
FangyingQuan1,2· LuWang3· YiboGao1,2· XinyuGong4· XiaofangLei5· BinqiLiang6· XinxinYu1,2· HonghanLi1,2
1 3
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