Unravelling the links between stress perception, anxiety, and smartphone addiction in adolescents: A two-wave longitudinal study.

BACKGROUND

The rise of smartphone addiction among adolescents, especially in China where internet and mobile usage are notably high, has prompted concerns about its impacts on mental health and social skills. Previous research has mainly used cross-sectional approaches, which are limited in establishing causality.

METHODS

This longitudinal study spanned two waves over three months and involved 926 Chinese adolescents. Smartphone addiction, stress perception, and anxiety were measured using the Smartphone Addiction Scale-Short Version, Stress Perception Scale, and Depression Anxiety Stress Scales-21, respectively. Multiple linear regression and cross-lagged panel models were used to analyse the data.

RESULTS

The findings demonstrated significant positive associations between stress perception and smartphone addiction both cross-sectionally and longitudinally. There was also a bidirectional relationship between stress perception and anxiety, with initial stress perception predicting greater smartphone addiction and anxiety in subsequent measurements. Anxiety mediated the relationship between stress perception and smartphone addiction in cross-sectional data, but not in the longitudinal data.

CONCLUSIONS

These findings lend partial support to the Compensatory Internet Use Theory. Specifically, perceived stress emerged as a temporally stable predictor of smartphone addiction, whereas anxiety functioned only as a concurrent pathway. As such, smartphone use appears to serve as a compensatory coping response to stress rather than to anxiety, underscoring the need for clinical interventions targeting stress appraisal and emotion regulation.