Abstract
Problematic Internet and smartphone use (PIU and PSU, respectively) have received significant attention over the past years. In the current work, we studied the associations between PIU and PSU, primary emotional systems, and need satisfaction. The effective sample comprised 399 people who responded to scales measuring these variables. Bivariate correlation analysis showed that both PSU and PIU were positively associated with negative primary emotion traits (FEAR, ANGER, SADNESS) as well as lower scores on most of the need satisfaction factors. Network analysis showed that while PIU and PSU have a strong association with each other, in general, there were not many significant correlations between PSU, PIU, and other variables in the network. The associations being present were rather weak. Network analysis showed that PSU was positively associated with FEAR, ANGER, PLAY primary emotional systems. Both PSU and PIU had a negative association with safety and security and physiological needs satisfaction. Moreover, PSU had a positive link with belongingness need satisfaction, while higher PIU was associated with lower esteem and self-actualization need satisfaction. Addressing those unmet needs may be helpful in reducing problematic technology use, but further research testing this would be necessary.
Highlights
Over more than a decade, researchers have aimed to understand the interplay between smartphone use and its associations and potential effects on human behavior and psychology
While correlations were computed for all pairs of variables, Table 1 only includes the coefficients for correlations that include problematic Internet use (PIU) and problematic smartphone use” (PSU), as this is the primary focus of this study
The aim of the current work was to investigate the associations between problematic Internet and smartphone use, primary emotional systems, and need satisfaction
Summary
Over more than a decade, researchers have aimed to understand the interplay between smartphone use and its associations and potential effects on human behavior and psychology. An alternative term is Internet use disorder (Montag et al, 2021b), which is in line with the nomenclature proposed by the World Health Organization in the context of gaming disorder. In essence, this phenomenon encompasses daily-life adversities due to excessive Internet use. As with the Internet use, researchers coined the term “problematic smartphone use” (PSU) to mark the negative associations with excessive smartphone use (Elhai et al, 2017). Internet and smartphone use could be in some contexts seen as synonymous, they may fuel different problematic behaviors; PIU is considered an overarching phenomenon that mediates specific online behaviors, as well as PSU (Baggio et al, 2018). Montag et al (2021b) have hypothesized that PSU could be viewed as a mobile form of PIU
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