Smartphone Addiction and Eysenck's Personality Traits Among Chinese Adolescents: A Meta-Analysis

Abstract

With the quickly rising popularity of smartphone among adolescents over the past decade, studies have begun to investigate the relationship between smartphone addiction and Eysenck's personality traits. Despite numerous studies on this topic, however, findings have been mixed and there is a lack of consensus regarding this relationship. Thus, this meta-analysis aimed to explore the relationship between smartphone addiction and Eysenck's personality traits in Chinese adolescents, as well as its possible moderators. Through literature search and screening, 33 studies were included, comprising 79 independent effect sizes with a total of 17, 737 subjects. A random effects model was selected, and it was found that smartphone addiction was positively associated with psychoticism (r = 0.16, p < 0.001) and neuroticism (r = 0.32, p < 0.001), but not significantly associated with extroversion (r = −0.06, p = 0.079). The moderating effect test showed that sex and year of study publication had significant influences on the relationship between smartphone addiction and psychoticism, and the year of study publication had a significant influence on the relationship between smartphone addiction and neuroticism. This study is the first meta-analysis on the relationship between smartphone addiction and Eysenck's personality traits among adolescents in China, and the results have helped to clarify the controversy of previous studies regarding this relationship.

Correlations between Problematic Mobile Phone Use and Depressiveness and Daytime Sleepiness, as Well as Perceived Social Support in Adolescents

“…On the other hand, loneliness, anxiety (including social anxiety), and depression constituting internalizing symptoms are considered not only consequences, but also important factors in the development and severity of behavioral addictions [ 30 , 31 , 32 ]. Thus, people with a high level of neuroticism characterized by an increased tendency to experience negative emotions and feelings—sadness, regret, envy, jealousy, anxiety—are more susceptible to behavioral addictions [ 33 , 34 , 35 ].…”

The relationship between neuroticism and mobile phone use among college students in love: The masking effect of self-emotional assessment

“…People with a high tendency to experience neuroticism are typically described as having a neurotic personality ( McCrae and Sutin, 2018 ). Individuals with highly neurotic personality traits often experience negative psychological conditions such as anxiety, stress, and depression, and display large mood fluctuations, strong responses to stimuli, and sometimes even irrational behaviors ( Brandes and Tackett, 2019 ; Friedman, 2019 ; Xiong et al, 2022 ).…”

“…Students accounted for 29.6%, ranking first in terms of occupation among all Chinese Internet users. As a group of college students with rapid ideological development and easy to accept new things, mobile phones have a subtle impact on their growth and development ( Mei et al, 2018 ; He et al, 2019 ; Xiong et al, 2022 ). For college students, mobile phone use is a double-edged sword.…”

“…Among the many factors affecting mobile phone use, the influence mechanism of neuroticism on individual mobile phone use has always been an important research topic in academia. The majority of studies have based themselves on the theory of emotional dissonance, which suggests that high neurotic individuals are more often in a state of emotional instability ( Brandes and Tackett, 2019 ; Xiong et al, 2022 ) and thus need to seek ways to cope with negative emotions more often ( Zhang et al, 2018 ), mobile phone use satisfies their need to communicate with others and integrate into society, alleviates their negative emotions, and provides them with psychological compensation ( Liu and Campbell, 2017 ; Carvalho et al, 2018 ; Lei et al, 2020 ; Bowden-Green et al, 2021 ).…”

The role of family functioning: How the Big Five affect metacognitions about smartphone use

“…Since the metacognition explored in this study is the metacognition of smartphone use, what is the relationship between personality and smartphones use? Some studies have found that personality traits could also be important factors contributing to problematic smartphone use or smartphone addiction ( Demkow-Jania et al, 2021 ; Xiong et al, 2021 ). High neuroticism and low conscientiousness predicted problematic smartphone use well ( Horwood and Anglim, 2021 ).…”