Gender Differences in the Impact of COVID-19 Lockdown on Potentially Addictive Behaviors: An Emotion-Mediated Analysis

Abstract

We study the impact of the spring 2020 lockdown in France on gender-related potentially addictive behaviors and associated negative emotions. We rely on an online survey we administered 1 week after the beginning of the lockdown, with responses collected within 2 weeks after the beginning of the lockdown (N = 1,087). We focus on potential addictions to non-creative activities as food consumption and smartphone usage (female-related), and videogame play (male-related). We find that women were about 1.6 times more likely than men to losing control of their usual diet and about 2.3 times more likely than men to increase smartphone usage, while no significant gender effect is detected as for increased videogame play. This is since the negative emotions driving the increase of female-related non-creative activities (sadness, discouragement, and nervousness) were themselves female-related, while the negative emotions driving the increase of male-related non-creative activities (boredom, emptiness, and stress) were shared by women too. Our study supports the intuition that the same negative emotion induced by COVID-19 side-effects could lead to different potentially addictive behaviors; this difference is explained by the interplay between different gender’s sensitivities to such emotion and different gender’s preferences for specific non-creative activities.

Psychoactive substance use, internet use and mental health changes during the COVID-19 lockdown in a French population: A study of gender effect

“…Stress, boredom and isolation caused by confinement, may have played a significant role in this increase ( 48 ). In France, Attanasi ( 49 ) ( N = 1,087, 74.7% of females) found that females were about 1.6 times more likely than males to lose control of their usual diet and about 2.3 times more likely than males to increase smartphone usage, while no significant gender effect was detected for increased videogame use. Grubbs ( N = 868 participants, 21% of females) reported that pornography use tended downward over the pandemic in both men and women, and problematic pornography use trended downward in men and remained low and unchanged in women ( 50 ).…”

COVID-19 Vaccination Concerns: Perspectives of Youths in a Developing Nation's Context

“…This may suggest that females were more interested in giving their concerns about covid-19 vaccines. Attanasi et al [16] explained that the restrictions of covid-19 pandemic, especially the lock downs impacted more on females than males especially as regards dieting, and the use of smart phones to ease boredom and emotional stress.…”

“…Reports have shown that females suffer more from the effect of pandemics as their male counterparts. Attanasi et al [16] showed that women were 1.6 times more likely than men to lose control of their usual diet and 2.3 times more prone to increased smart phone use during a lock down. Women are also generally more concerned about their health compared to the male folks (Green et al 2022).…”

Target-the-Two: a lab-in-the-field experiment on routinization

“…We have information on age, gender, education and inebriation level. As the task is implemented on young-friendly tablets, the higher familiarity with technology of younger (and possibly male) subjects should have a positive impact on their performance (see, e.g., Attanasi et al 2021b, and references therein, as for higher videogame addiction by younger and male subjects). Thus, both age and female gender should have a negative impact on subjects' performance.…”