Associations between mobile phone addiction and depressive symptoms in college students: A conditional process model

Abstract

Depression is a prominent mental health problem facing college students today. Mobile phone addiction is a potential factor that may affect depression. However, the precise relationship between mobile phone addiction and depression is still unclear, which limits the optimization and further application of intervention programs aimed at alleviating mobile phone addiction. Previous studies have shown that poor sleep quality can significantly increase depressive symptoms. According to the “theory of diathesis-stress”, neuroticism as a susceptibility quality can affect the occurrence of depression. Therefore, this study aimed to investigate how sleep quality and neuroticism may influence the relationship between mobile phone addiction and depressive symptoms. These relationships were studied in 850 Chinese college students by building a conditional process model, which involved mobile phone addiction as the focal predictors, depressive symptoms as the outcome, sleep quality as the mediator, and neuroticism as the moderator. Correlational analyses indicated that both mobile phone addiction and depressive symptoms were significantly and negatively associated with sleep quality, and mobile phone addiction was significantly and positively associated with depressive symptoms. Additionally, sleep quality mediated the association between mobile phone addiction and depressive symptoms. Moreover, a neurotic personality respectively moderated the relationships between mobile phone addiction and depressive symptoms, and between sleep quality and depressive symptoms. These findings suggest that intervention in mobile phone addiction and improvement of sleep quality are potentially effective means to directly or indirectly prevent symptoms of depression. This study provides a basis for predicting individual differences in response to reducing the risk of depression among college students.