A time-lagged study of two possible routes from personal innovativeness to life satisfaction in adolescents: Learning and social interaction on mobile phones

Abstract

Personal innovativeness as a personality trait involves a growth mechanism that has the potential to increase life satisfaction. Very few studies have attempted to explore the processes underlying the above association. Two routes, learning-related mobile phone use and human capital acquisition, and social interaction mobile phone use and social capital acquisition, were suggested to explain the relation between personal innovativeness and life satisfaction. A total of 743 valid three-wave data (55.9% girls) was collected from Chinese secondary school students over the course of 1.5 years. The results showed that the link of learning-related mobile phone use and human capital acquisition at Time 2 mediated the association between personal innovativeness at Time 1 and life satisfaction at Time 3, but the link of social interaction use and social capital acquisition at Time 2 did not. These findings reiterate the importance of personal innovativeness and indicate its long-term effect on adolescents' development and life satisfaction.