Chinese Adolescents’ Academic Stress and Smartphone Addiction

The development of mobile phones brought many advantages and new features to individuals, now able to hold many functions in their pocket, but smartphones also led to higher levels of addiction. Smartphone addiction is defined as the “repetitive and impulsive use of smartphones that usually comes with negative consequences.” Especially, the most touched categories of population who experience such addictive behaviors are young people and adolescents, who have been found to be less sensitive to the amount of time they spend on smartphones. Symptoms and consequences of smartphone addiction include productivity loss, constantly checking for notifications, as well as mental and physical problems.

This research focuses in particular on the links between stress and smartphone addiction. In the case of adolescents, academic stress is one of the main stressors in their life, hence why the researchers have decided to narrow down their focus on academic stress and how it is linked to adolescents’ smartphone addiction.

This study was conducted in China, where the smartphone subscriptions in December 2020 have reached 1.59 billion, with 183 million Chinese adolescents having access to the internet and over 65% of them reporting smartphones as their major means of accessing mobile networks (Ministry of Industry and Information Technology of China). Chinese students are also under major academic stress, due to academic achievement being tied with competing for limited resources and striving for a better life, especially in some impoverished regions.

Previous research has found that both stress and depression were associated with addictive behaviors and that adolescents use technologies as a way to release their negative feelings. In summary, adolescents who experience high levels of academic stress or more likely to be depressed and anxious, which may lead them to grow addicted to their smartphones. Other studies found that people who were highly depressed were more likely to use smartphones for nonsocial activities (listening to music for instance) rather than for social purposes (like messaging).

The research gathered 18 Chinese middle and high schools. In each school, 100 questionnaires were sent out, which led to a total of 1,718 adolescents (82 respondents did not complete the survey) responding to the questionnaire. The average age was 14.63 years old. Questions in the questionnaire included “How do you feel about your academic stress?” to be rated on a scale of 0 to 10. The study also used the Patient Health Questionnaire (PHQ-9) in order to assess depression severity.

Results showed a significant indirect effect from academic stress to addictive smartphone use. The study also found that there was a significant difference in moderated mediation effect between utilitarian and social uses of smartphones.