Self-compassion Enhances Emotional Regulation In College Students With Problematic Smartphone Use

Smartphones have long been an important and indispensable part of people’s daily lives,but the problematic use of smartphones has gradually started to affect people’s psychological and physical health.College students are one of the main groups that use smartphones excessively,and it is necessary to intervene effectively because smartphones are easily used as a tool to regulate their emotions in the face of negative events.It has been found that self-compassion can improve the psychological well-being of individuals and promote positive development.Therefore,this study explored the mechanism of emotion regulation between the two,starting from a self-compassion perspective,using problematic smartphone use as the dependent variable and emotion regulation as a mediating variable.At the same time,the eight-week course of meditative self-compassion was used to intervene in problematic smartphone use among college students to explore the effect of the course on improving emotion regulation and on problematic smartphone use,and to provide a theoretical basis for intervention in smartphone use among college students.In the first study,400 online questionnaires were distributed to college students in Southwest University,and 356 valid questionnaires were collected.The questionnaires selected were the Mobile Phone Use Problem Inventory(MPAI),the Emotion Regulation Questionnaire(ERQ),and the self-compassion Questionnaire(SCS-S)to explore the relationship between self-compassion,problematic smartphone use,and emotion regulation.The findings revealed that self-compassion significantly and negatively predicted problematic smartphone use,with both cognitive reappraisal and expression inhibition mediating the relationship.Self-compassion significantly and positively predicted cognitive reappraisal,and cognitive reappraisal significantly and negatively predicted problematic smartphone use;self-compassion significantly and negatively predicted expression inhibition,and expression inhibition significantly and positively predicted problematic smartphone use.In Study 2,based on Experiment 1,34 college students with problematic smartphone use were selected for the follow-up experiment and randomly assigned to the experimental and control groups.The experimental group underwent an eight-week intervention of quiet self-compassion,while the control group did not apply any intervention.Pre-and post-tests were administered to both groups,with the main measurement instruments being the questionnaire related to Experiment 1and an emotion regulation behavioral experiment.The behavioral experiment used highly negative images to induce negative emotions in college students with problematic smartphone use,asking them to use a "viewing" and "cognitive reappraisal" strategy when viewing these negative images,and to rate the emotional experience of the negative images on a scale of 1 to 9.The questionnaire was analyzed using repeated measures of variance(ANOVA),and the results showed that the main effects of the experimental group and the control group on the use of problematic smartphones,cognitive reappraisal,and self-compassion were significant,while the main effect of measurement time was not significant and the interaction between the groups and time was not significant;the emotion regulation task was measured using the three-factor repeated measures of measurement time(pre-test/post-test)× between-group(control group/experimental group)× strategy(viewing/cognitive reappraisal).ANOVAs were conducted to test for differences in cognitive reappraisal between the experimental and control groups before and after the intervention.The results showed significant main effects for pre-and post-tests,significant main effects for strategies,non-significant between-group effects,and non-significant interactions between variables.The final results found that the meditative self-compassion sessions improved cognitive reassessment and enhanced self-compassion levels while reducing problematic smartphone use behaviors.In summary,this study used questionnaire and experimental methods to verify the relationship between self-compassion,emotion regulation and problematic smartphone use,as well as to provide experimental evidence and a theoretical basis for intervening in problematic smartphone use,which can help college students to better care for themselves,use smartphones more scientifically,and promote the development of college students’ mental health.