Effects of Difficulty in Handling Emotions and Social Interactions on Nomophobia: Examining the Mediating Role of Feelings of Loneliness

Abstract

This study was addressed to assess nomophobia in an Italian sample (N = 456, 53.1% men, Mage = 31.8, SD = 11.1), also providing a deeper knowledge about how it is distributed across demographics, as well as identifying its best predictors. The main goal was to investigate the direct and indirect effects of difficulty in emotion regulation and social interaction anxiety on nomophobia through loneliness. Our findings indicated that loneliness explained the effect of the expressive suppression strategy (fully) and social interaction anxiety (partially) on nomophobia, whereas it was not a significant mediator when the cognitive reappraisal strategy was taken into account. Our study suggests that loneliness during the pandemic plays a crucial role in explaining the associations between the investigated predictors and the outcome variable, offering a deeper understanding of the underlying mechanisms of this emerging construct. Theoretical and practical implications are discussed, and shortcomings and suggestions for future works are presented.

Assessing the Two Sources of Construct-Relevant Psychometric Multidimensionality of the Nomophobia Questionnaire: The Integrated Framework of Bifactor Exploratory Structural Equation Modeling

“…Thus, from a practical perspective, it may be sufficient, and in the meantime justifiable, to take into account the global score of the NMP-Q. Generally speaking, these results are consistent with previous theorethical and empirical studies on nomophobia as a phenomenon associated with poor psychological well-being Santl et al, 2022;Valenti et al, 2022). Taken together, the current research contributes to the advancement of measurement and theory on nomophobia, while also providing further support for the broad methodological literature on approaches to account for construct-relevant psychometric multidimensionality of complex constructs.…”

“…From this perspective, some studies have shown that these disorders often coexist . In addition, the recent and ongoing literature on nomophobia has also reported associations with other external variables, such as difficulty in emotion regulation (Santl et al, 2022;Valenti et al, 2022), loneliness (Arpaci, 2022;Gezgin, Cakir, & Yildirim, 2018;Valenti et al, 2022), social interaction anxiety (Bulut & Sengul, 2023;Valenti et al, 2022), and other physical and mental health problems (Rodríguez-García et al, 2020), evidencing linkages between this emerging construct and several aspects of poor psychological well-being. For these reasons, the evaluation of nomophobia in health professions is relevant in clinical settings and it represents a significant topic of investigation in this era.…”

The Development of a Short Version of the Internet Addiction Test: The IAT-7

“…Growing engagement in online social activities is replacing offline interactions, thereby preventing individuals from establishing or maintaining social relationships, reducing interests in other aspects of life, and weakening psychological health (Valenti et al, 2022;Weinstein & Lejoyeux, 2010). In line with this interpretation, researchers have investigated the relationship between IA and psychological well-being, reporting associations with psychiatric and subthreshold psychiatric symptoms (Rosa et al, 2022), with stress, depression, and anxiety being the most common comorbid conditions (Andrade et al, 2020;Dong et al, 2020;Sayed et al, 2022).…”

The effect of emotion regulation strategies on nomophobia in college students: The masking role of resilience

“…Enhancing teenagers' emotional regulation reduces screen time [ 27 ]. Previous studies on the effects of nomophobia on college students' mental health have focused on personality traits, impulsivity, various emotional difficulties, sleep quality and perceived stress [ 1 , 5 , [28] , [29] , [30] , [31] ]. Further research is required to determine whether emotion regulation strategies affect nomophobia.…”