The relationships between negative emotions and smartphone addiction has been tested through the literature. However, most of the studies applied variable-centered approaches. The heterogeneity of smartphone addiction severity has not been examined for the associations with negative emotion variables. The purposes of the present study is to explore the latent classes of smartphone addiction and analyze the relationships between depression, social anxiety and boredom and these subgroups. The Smartphone Addiction Scale-Short Version (SAS-SV) and three negative emotion scales were employed to conduct a survey of 539 college students. Mplus8.3 software was applied to perform the latent class analysis (LCA) based on the smartphone addiction symptom ratings. ANOVA and multinomial logistic regression were used to explore the differences among these latent categories and the associations between these subgroups and negative emotion variables. Results demonstrated that Negative emotional variables were significantly correlated with smartphone addiction proneness. Based on their scores on the Smartphone Addiction Scale, smartphone users were divided into three latent classes: low risk class, moderate class and high risk class. Women were more likely to be classified in the high-risk class. The severity of depression and boredom was able to predict the membership of the latent class effectively; while social anxiety failed to do this in the high risk class.

Background Psychological distress (depression, anxiety and stress) is more common among medical students than in the general population, and is an important cause of insomnia, internet addiction, substance abuse, decreased academic performance and increased suicidality in medical students. Methods To examine the mechanism by which regulatory emotional self-efficacy affects medical students' psychological distress, a questionnaire of 539 medical students using an interpersonal adaptability scale, regulatory emotional self-efficacy scale, self-acceptance scale and depression-anxiety-stress scale was conducted. Results ① Regulatory emotional self-efficacy, interpersonal adaptability and self-acceptance are positively correlated, but they are negatively correlated with psychological distress. ② The mediation model shows that interpersonal adaptation and self-acceptance are the mediation variables of the effect of regulatory emotional self-efficacy on psychological distress, and the total mediation effect value is -0.37, accounting for 86.05% of the total effect (-0.43). Specifically, the effect involves three paths: first, regulatory emotional self-efficacy indirectly affects psychological distress through interpersonal adaptation (effect value-0.24); second, regulatory emotional self-efficacy indirectly affects psychological distress through interpersonal adaptation and self-acceptance (effect value-0.08); and third, regulatory emotional self-efficacy indirectly affects psychological distress through self-acceptance (effect value -0.05). Conclusions Interpersonal adaptation and self-acceptance have a significant mediating effect between regulatory emotional self-efficacy and psychological distress, and the chain mediating effect of interpersonal adaptation and self-acceptance is also significant.