Abstract
First-year college students’ adaptation problems and related mental health have attracted researchers’ attention. The current research focuses on the depressive symptoms of first-year college students and aims to explore the relationship between the neuroticism trait and depressive symptoms, the mediating effect of addictive use of social media, and the moderating effect of psychological resilience. Three-wave longitudinal data from 1128 first-year students at a university in Fujian Province, China, were collected within three months of their enrollment. PROCESS macro for SPSS with bootstrapping was used to test the model. Results showed that the prevalence of moderate to severe severity of depressive symptoms in first-year students was 10.28% (T1) and 11.17% (T3). Addictive use of social media (T2) plays a moderated mediator role in the relationship between neuroticism (T1) and depressive symptoms (T3) of first-year students. Specifically, a low neuroticism individual does not necessarily have a less addictive use of social media. Psychological resilience (T1) moderated the above mediation. Implications for research and practice are discussed.
Highlights
While college presents many students with opportunities for personal growth and enhancement, some students find the demands of college adjustment exceed their coping resources [1]
We aimed to provide insights into how, and under what conditions, neuroticism leads to a higher level of depressive symptoms
The present study implied that low neuroticism people with low psychological resilience might have a risk of addictive use of social media
Summary
While college presents many students with opportunities for personal growth and enhancement, some students find the demands of college adjustment exceed their coping resources [1]. New college students begin their transition from adolescence to adulthood, and many of them have difficulty adapting to college life. The worse the adaptation of first-year students, the higher the risk of psychological disturbance [2,3]. Previous studies have shown that there is a significant correlation between depression symptoms and suicide ideation of college students [4,5]. The mental health of first-year college students, especially depressive symptoms, deserves our attention. Many researches have demonstrated the closing association between personality traits and depression, especially the role of high neuroticism in developing depression [6,7,8,9]. A large national survey in Norway has explored that being a student and
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