The Impact Of Mobile Phone Addiction On Adolescents' Anxiety And Depression: The Moderating Role Of Mindfulness

Mobile phones, as an excellent carrier of mobile Internet technology, have integrated into people's daily lives and been ubiquitous in modern society. Proper utilization of mobile phones can satisfy individual diverse needs in learning and shopping,as well as in recreation and social interaction, whereas overindulging in the use of mobile phones, may exert significantly negative effects on individual mental and physical health,and even lead to anxiety and depression. Adolescents are in a transitional period from childishness to maturity, and are vulnerable to negative feelings like anxiety and depression due to the unbalance between physical and mental development as well as substantial levels of stress deriving from their studying and daily lives. On the other side,the convenience of Internet and mobile phones allow for simple and easy access for adolescents to communicate and socialize by virtue of these new means, resulting in a sharp rise of penetration of these devices in adolescent group. More noteworthy, the incidence rate of mobile phone addiction in adolescents has been substantial, and much research from multiple countries indicated that the proportion of mobile phone addiction was beyond 30%. Under the severe circumstances, the harmful influences of addictive use of mobile phones on adolescents' mental and physical development have aroused researchers' common concern.Despite the relation that mobile phone addiction was a salient contributor to anxiety and depression has been confirmed by a number of studies, the inner effecting mechanisms, especially the moderating mechanism (i.e., when is mobile phone addiction more likely to cause anxiety and depression, or what kind of persons are more susceptible to the effect) have not been explored thoroughly. According to the diathesis-stress theories, individuals with distinct traits will react diversely to stressful events or negative experiences, so the effects of stress and adversity as well as the degree of influence may vary from person to person. Therefore, exploring what kind of trait can moderate the association among mobile phone addiction, anxiety and depression, is not only beneficial to understand the effecting mechanism deeply, but conductive to alleviating the detrimental consequence of mobile phone addiction.A sample of 1258 high school students were chosen randomly using convenience sampling to engage in the questionnaire survey. The results indicated that (1) male adolescents showed higher level of mobile addiction than males; (2) mobile phone addiction was negatively correlated with mindfulness, and positively correlated with anxiety and depression; mindfulness was negatively correlated with anxiety and depression; anxiety was positively correlated with depression; (3) mindfulness moderated the relation between mobile phone addiction and anxiety, with the effect of mobile phone addiction on anxiety being stronger in adolescents with low mindfulness; (4) mindfulness moderated the relation between mobile phone addiction and depression, with the effect of mobile phone addiction on depression being stronger in adolescents with low mindfulness.At last, this study introduces mindfulness-based group intervention and mindfulness-based self-training. The present study contributes to a better understanding of the relation between mobile phone addiction and adolescents' anxiety and depression,as well as the underlying mechanism. It also offers some useful suggestions for protecting mental health of adolescents from adverse impacts of mobile phone addiction.Lastly, the limitations of this study as well as the future directions are discussed.