The Development Trajectory Of High School Students’ Mobile Phone Dependence And The Association Among Mobile Phone Dependence,psychological Distress And Negative Life Events

As the technology develops,mobile phones have brought people convenience for its multiple functions as well as some problems.At present,many studies have explored the problems that may be caused by mobile phone dependence,such as how mobile phone dependence affects interpersonal communication,social adjustment,emotional problems,and so on.In recent years,more and more researches have begun to focus on mobile phone dependence.After sorting out,we found that the existing research has some limitations.First of all,previous studies have mostly explored the association between mobile phone dependence and its influencing factors from a cross-sectional perspective.Few studies have explored the internal mechanism of mobile phone dependence and other related variables from the perspective of a longitudinal design.Secondly,previous studies have found that many high school students have relatively prominent mobile phone dependence,but there are certain differences in the degree of dependence of different students,but existing studies lack sufficient attention to this individual difference.Finally,high school students are at an important stage in their life development.There is a large imbalance between their psychological development and mental development,so they are prone to emotional and behavioral problems.Paying attention to the mobile phone dependence and emotional problems of this group will help schools make better interventions to promote the physical and mental health of high school students.Therefore,this research mainly combines the cross-sectional design and longitudinal design to explore the relationship and mechanism of negative life events,psychological distress and high school students’ mobile phone dependence,as well as examine the development trajectory of high school students’ mobile phone dependence and the predictive function of negative life events and psychological distress at time 1.It mainly includes the following three studies.Study 1 Cross-sectional research is used to explore the association among high school students’ negative life events,psychological distress and mobile phone dependence,and we found that psychological distress partially mediates the relation between negative life events and mobile phone dependence of high school students.Study 2 longitudinal research is used to explore the association among high school students’ negative life events,psychological distress and mobile phone dependence,and we found that psychological distress at time 2 fully mediates the relation between negative life events at time 1 and mobile phone dependence at time 3.Study 3 explores the association among the development trajectory of mobile phone dependence,psychological distress,and negative life events longitudinally.The results of the Latent Class Growth Modeling show that mobile phone dependence does not present a single development pattern,but there are four types of heterogeneous subgroups,namely,the low-decreasing class(33.4%),the medium-low level stable class(42.1%),the medium-high increasing class(22.3%)and the high-increasing class(2.2%).Taking negative life events(T1)and psychological distress(T1)as independent variables,a logistic regression analysis was conducted on the development trajectory of high school students’ mobile phone dependence.The results showed that compared with the low-decreasing class,the level of negative life events was much higher in the high-increasing class,and the level of psychological distress was significantly higher in the medium-high increasing class.In conclusion,these studies have made great contributions for education.First of all,the partial mediation of psychological distress was found in the cross-sectional study,and the full mediation of psychological distress at time 2 was found between negative life events at time 1 and mobile phone dependence at time 3 in the longitudinal study.This shows that negative life events can affect individuals’ psychological distress,and then cause individuals to become dependent on mobile phones.Therefore,parents,teachers,and mental health educators should give more care to young people and help young people alleviate their negative emotions in the face of negative life events,which may help reduce their dependence on mobile phones.Besides,The results of the Latent Class Growth Modeling show that there are individual differences in the degree of mobile phone dependence of different high school students,which is represented by four types of heterogeneous subgroups.Besides,Logistic regression analysis results show that negative life events and psychological distress positively predicts the development trajectory of high school students’ mobile phone dependence.Therefore,parents and schools should cooperate with each other in the intervention of mobile phone dependence and pay attention to this part of students.When adolescents have mobile phone dependence problems,we should find the causes of the problem,and promptly conduct psychological counseling and behavior correction to help them develop good habits.At the same time,we may monitor the time when teenagers use mobile phones and other electronic devices to prevent young people from increasing their dependence on mobile phones.