ArticleJournal of youth and adolescence2024
The Vicious Cycle between Loneliness and Problematic Smartphone Use among Adolescents: A Random Intercept Cross-Lagged Panel Model.
Article in Journal of youth and adolescence, 2024. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 14 papers.
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Who cites it
14 citing papers in PubMed, 16 citations in OpenAlex.
- Maternal Loneliness and Technoference During Early Childhood: The Mediating Roles of Nomophobia and Social Media Addiction.European journal of investigation in health, psychology and education · 2026Article
- Developmental trajectories and dynamic associations between loneliness and non-suicidal self-injury in adolescents: the longitudinal mediating role of mobile phone dependence.Child and adolescent psychiatry and mental health · 2026Article
- A Vicious Cycle of Psychological Distress and Problematic Mobile Phone Use in Adolescence: A Longitudinal Test of a Dual Metacognitive Pathway.Journal of adolescence · 2026Article
- Mindfulness as a mediator and moderator between interpersonal alienation and smartphone addiction among Taiwanese university students.BMC psychology · 2026Article
- How do social media use, gaming frequency, and internalizing symptoms predict each other over time in early-to-middle adolescence?Journal of public health (Oxford, England) · 2026Article
- The role of loneliness in smartphone addiction levels of adolescent online game players.Frontiers in psychology · 2026Article
- Associations of smartphone use duration and loneliness with depressive symptoms among Korean adolescents: a nationally representative cross-sectional study.Frontiers in public health · 2026Article
- The relationship between mindfulness, self-control, and short video addiction among medical students.Frontiers in psychology · 2026Article
- The Bidirectional Relationships between Social Pressure in Digital Contexts, Depression, and Social Support over Time.Psychosocial intervention · 2025Article
- Loneliness moderates the predictive effect of the trait-state FoMO pathway on problematic social media use.Addictive behaviors reports · 2025Article
- Smartphone addiction and sleep quality in the physical activity-anxiety link: a mediation-moderation model.Frontiers in public health · 2025Article
- Temporal focus, dual-system self-control, and college students' short-video addiction: a variable-centered and person-centered approach.Frontiers in psychology · 2025Article
- Article
- Parental conflict and adolescents' socially adverse emotions: the mediating role of family functioning.Frontiers in psychology · 2024Article
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
15 authors at 7 institutions in 3 countries.
Funding
Abstract
Despite extensive research on the psychological impacts of digital technology, the nuanced dynamics between adolescent loneliness and problematic smartphone use, particularly across different educational levels and genders, remain underexplored. This study aims to fill this gap by employing a Random Intercept Cross-Lagged Panel Model to dissect the bidirectional relationship between loneliness and problematic smartphone use among adolescents, with a focus on the moderating roles of educational levels and gender. Engaging 3132 students from various educational institutions in China, the research conducted a three-wave longitudinal analysis across 2022-2023. The final number of participants included 1120 adolescents (53.5% female; age in 2022: M = 14.57 years, SD = 1.57). Results reveal that loneliness significantly predicts problematic smartphone use, but not vice versa, highlighting a unidirectional influence. The study uncovers crucial differences across educational levels and gender, emphasizing the stronger effect of loneliness on problematic smartphone use among junior high students and female adolescents. These findings underscore the complexity of adolescent loneliness and its relationship with digital behavior, suggesting a need for tailored interventions considering both gender and developmental stages.
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Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.