The relationship between social anxiety and emotion regulation with adolescent smartphone addiction: The mediating role of online social support

Abstract

The present study aimed to examine the relationship between social anxiety and emotion regulation with adolescents’ smartphone addiction, considering the mediating role of online social support. This research was fundamental in nature and employed a descriptive-correlational design based on structural equation modeling. The statistical population consisted of male and female adolescents aged 12 to 18 years from District 6 of Tehran. A total of 247 adolescents (boys and girls) were selected through random sampling and completed the Smartphone Addiction Questionnaire (Forster et al., 2015), the Cognitive Emotion Regulation Questionnaire (CERQ; Garnefski & Kraaij), the Social Anxiety Questionnaire for Adolescents (SAQJ; Jorábek), and the Online Social Support Scale (Nick et al., 2018). Data were analyzed using SPSS-26 and LISREL-8 software. Structural equation modeling was employed to test the research hypotheses.

The results indicated that social anxiety, emotion regulation, and online social support had direct and significant effects on adolescents’ smartphone addiction (P < 0.001). Moreover, online social support showed a significant indirect effect in the relationship between social anxiety, emotion regulation, and smartphone addiction (P < 0.001). It can be concluded that social anxiety and difficulties in emotion regulation directly increase adolescents’ smartphone addiction. Meanwhile, online social support functions as a protective factor that can either buffer or amplify the impact of risk factors such as social anxiety. Furthermore, adolescents with poor emotion regulation tend to seek online social support as a substitute for real-life interactions, which in turn increases their dependency on smartphones. Therefore, paying attention to the quality of supportive relationships and maintaining a balance between technology use and face-to-face interactions is essential for preventing and treating smartphone addiction among adolescents.