Abstract
Alexithymia and mobile phone addiction are common phenomena in daily life. Many studies have explored the internal relationship between them based on different theoretical perspectives, but the extent of the exact correlation is still controversial. To address this controversy and clarify the reasons for the divergence, a meta-analysis of 26 articles comprising 23,387 Chinese students was conducted. The results show that alexithymia was highly positively correlated with mobile phone addiction (r = 0.41, 95% CI = [0.37, 0.45]). Furthermore, the relationship was moderated by mobile phone addiction measurement tool and year of publication, with studies using the Mobile Phone Addiction Tendency Scale (MPATS) having higher correlation coefficients than those using the Mobile Phone Addiction Index (MPAI) or other measurement tools. Studies published in 2020–2021 yielded higher correlations than those published in 2014–2016 and 2017–2019. However, the relationship was not moderated by gender, region, or measures of alexithymia. Therefore, our meta-analysis of available published data indicated that alexithymia and mobile phone addiction in Chinese students are not only highly positively correlated but also affected by mobile phone addiction measurement tools and publication year. Longitudinal studies or experimental studies should be strengthened in the future to further establish the direction(s) of causality for the relation between alexithymia and mobile phone addiction.
Highlights
Mobile phones have become an indispensable part of daily life
The results show that the link between alexithymia and mobile phone addiction (MPA) was not moderated by gender
A meta-analysis similar to this study found that the relationship between MPA and Moderating Role of Publication Year Publication year moderated the positive correlation between alexithymia and MPA, and the results showed that the correlation was generally enhanced with the development of time
Summary
Mobile phones have become an indispensable part of daily life. Smartphones can perform a variety of functions, such as internet surfing, e-mail management, online games and social networking [1, 2]. According to the “The 47th China Statistical Report on Internet Development,” as of December 2020, the number of mobile internet users of teenagers aged 10–19 has reached 136 million, accounting for 13.5% of the total number of internet users. Smartphones can help teenagers with online communication, shopping, entertainment, learning and other activities and bring great convenience to their study and life, it should be noted that an increasing number of teenagers are finding it difficult to eliminate the use of mobile phones, which leads to the emergence of mobile phone addiction (MPA) [4, 5]
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