The Capacity to Be Alone Moderates Psychopathological Symptoms and Social Networks Use in Adolescents during the COVID-19 Pandemic

Abstract

During the COVID-19 pandemic, adolescents could not leave their house freely, meet up with friends, or attend school; previous literature showed that youths under enforced confinement or quarantine were five times more likely to suffer from psychopathological symptoms and use social networks sites (SNs) greatly. This study aimed to verify whether the quality of the parent-adolescent relationship could predict youths’ psychopathological symptoms and their SN use during the pandemic, and to evaluate the possible moderator role of their the capacity to be alone. Seven hundred and thirty-nine (n = 739) adolescents were recruited from the general population during the COVID-19 lockdown in Italy, and they were administered The Capacity to be Alone Scale, The BSMAS, the YSR, and the Perceived Filial Self-efficacy Scale. Our results confirmed a direct effect of the perceived filial self-efficacy on the psychopathological symptoms so that a poorer perceived quality of the relationship with the caregivers predicted higher psychopathological symptoms in youths. Moreover, greater social networks use was predictive of psychopathological symptoms in adolescents. Our results also showed a significant interaction effect between adolescents’ perceived filial efficacy and the capacity to be alone on SN use and on psychopathological symptoms. These results suggest that youths’ response to the confinement during the pandemic is influenced both by individual characteristics (the capacity to be alone) and by relational variables (the perceived filial self-efficacy).

Parental psychosocial factors predicting adolescents' psychological adjustment during the surging and remission periods of COVID-19 in China: A longitudinal study

“…As COVID swept globally and continued to pose new threats, follow-up studies and data from a wide range of areas are warranted. Nevertheless, research investigating parental influence on children's adaptation to the pandemic conducted thus far, including the present study, all points to the critical role parents play in protecting children from extreme stress, as well as facilitating children's own capacity of emotion regulation and adaptive behavior under stress (e.g., Petrocchi et al, 2020 ; Cimino and Cerniglia, 2021 ). Lastly, as an initial attempt to understand parent's role in adolescents' adjustment in COVID-19, we did not explore mediation and moderation effects among the parental factors, or interaction effects between parent and child variables—investigation that is necessary and imperative to better understand parental influence on adolescents' mental health in the pandemic.…”

“…Maternal mental health symptoms were also found to mediate the effects of pandemic-related stressors on American adolescents' internalizing/externalizing problems ( Lengua et al, 2022 ). Similarly, studies conducted during the surging period of COVID-19 in Italy showed that parental active coping was positively associated with young children's adaptive behaviors ( Petrocchi et al, 2020 ), and poorer quality of parent-child relationship was associated with higher levels of psychopathological symptoms among adolescents ( Cimino and Cerniglia, 2021 ). A recent study from China provided comparable results that adolescents' negative affect, PTSD symptoms, anxiety, and depression during the initial outbreak of the pandemic were related to maternal anxiety ( Zhou et al, 2022 ).…”

Antecedents of social media addiction in high and low relational mobility societies: Motivation to expand social network and fear of reputational damage

“…Although speculative, the capacity to be alone might have weakened the relationship between loneliness and addiction. As the capacity to be alone is negatively related to social media addiction [ 57 ], even when individuals feel lonely, if their capacity to be alone is significant, they will not be strongly addicted to social media. We also found that loneliness was significantly negatively correlated with relational mobility ( r = -0.26, p < 0.01), which is inconsistent with the results obtained by Oishi et al [ 50 ], who found that participants felt lonelier when they were asked to imagine a situation wherein they frequently moved to a different location.…”

Twenty years of emotional-behavioral problems of community adolescents living in Italy measured through the Achenbach system of empirically based assessment (ASEBA): a systematic review and meta-analysis

“…A narrative description of the findings of these studies is reported in Table 1 . There are three major trends identified in the current literature: The larger part of these studies ( n = 8, 29.6%) investigated adolescents’ problems in respect to attachment ( 42 , 44 , 45 , 52 , 54 , 64 , 67 , 72 ); a second trend investigated problems and other comorbid symptoms ( n = 8, 29.6%), i.e., internet or social media misuse ( 48 , 50 , 57 , 67 ), eating disorders ( 71 , 81 ), alcohol misuse ( 57 ), sleep problems ( 66 ). A last identifiable trend focused the role of parental features ( n = 5, 18.5%) such as parenting style/control ( 61 , 79 ), patterns of communication ( 60 ), and symptoms ( 69 , 83 ).…”