Depression and emotion regulation predict objective smartphone use measured over one week

By Jon D. Elhai, Mojisola Tiamiyu, Justin W. Weeks, Jason C. Levine, Kristina J. Picard, Brian J. Hall. Personality and Individual Differences, 2017

222 citations recorded by the source corpus.

Abstract Increasing use of smartphones is a notable and worldwide phenomenon, and investigating the potential role this use has on population health is a critical area of research. Prior studies have found psychopathology correlated with frequency of smartphone use. However, this research relied on cross-sectional data and solely utilized subjectively reported smartphone use. These methodological shortcomings should be overcome to understand a truer picture of the association between increased smartphone use and psychopathology. Utilizing an intensive repeated measures study design, we used a smartphone application (app) to monitor daily minutes of smartphone use over the course of one week among 68 college students. Using latent growth curve modeling, we found that lower depression severity predicted increased smartphone use over the week. Additionally, greater use of expressive suppression as an emotion regulation strategy predicted more baseline smartphone use, but less smartphone use during the week. These findings suggest that depression and expressive suppression of emotions accounted for significant variability in objectively measured smartphone use. Depression and emotion regulation are discussed in regard to corresponding patterns of smartphone usage. This paper contributes to knowledge of psychopathological correlates of smartphone use by repeated, objective smartphone use measurement.

Subfields: Education, Experimental and Cognitive Psychology, Sociology and Political Science

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/98e30f82d261602f1c5d038edfceebdb23445893

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Citations in the corpus

Beyond Screen Time: Identity Development in the Digital Age (2020, background): “…show little or no effect (Coyne, Rogers, Zurcher, Stockdale, & Booth, 2020; Ferguson, 2019; Ferguson & Wang, 2019; Heffer et al., 2019; Hilgard, Engelhardt, & Rouder, 2017; Jensen, George, Russell, & Odgers, 2019; Orben, Dienlin, & Przybylski, 2019; Rozgonjuk, Levine, Hall, & Elhai et al., 2018).”
A systematic review and meta-analysis of discrepancies between logged and self-reported digital media use (2021, methodology): “Moreover, while the recording accuracy of some tracking tools has been validated against external timers, prospective loggers or manual recordings 45,84 , more research is needed to understand the accuracy of these tools, especially those developed by third parties for general usage.”
Psychological Distress, Emotion Dysregulation, and Coping Behaviour: a Theoretical Perspective of Problematic Smartphone Use (2020, background): “Self-report studies suggest that problematic smartphone use severity is associated with symptoms of depression and anxiety (for reviews, see Elhai et al. 2017, 2019a; Vahedi and Saiphoo 2018), loneliness (Bian and Leung 2015; Mahapatra 2019; Darcin et al. 2016), low social support (Herrero et al.…”
Fear of missing out (FOMO): overview, theoretical underpinnings, and literature review on relations with severity of negative affectivity and problematic technology use (2020, background): “Entretanto, as taxas de uso da Internet autodeclaradas diferem das medidas objetivas de uso (por exemplo, registros de dispositivos) [97-99].”