Are bored minds more likely to be addicted? The relationship between boredom proneness and problematic mobile phone use.

BACKGROUND Boredom proneness has been demonstrated as a salient vulnerability factor for problematic mobile phone use. However, the mediating and moderating mechanisms underlying this relationship are less investigated. In the current study, we constructed an integrative moderated mediation model to test the mediating role of depression and the moderating role of attentional control in the relationship between boredom proneness and problematic mobile phone use. METHOD A total of 1099 college students (Mage = 20.04; SD = 1.25) were recruited to fill out the questionnaires measuring boredom proneness, depression, problematic mobile phone use, and attentional control. RESULTS Depression partially mediated the relationship between boredom proneness and problematic mobile phone use. Attentional control moderated the indirect relationship between boredom proneness and problematic mobile phone use through depression, with the indirect relationship being weaker for college students with higher levels of attentional control. Moreover, attentional control moderated the direct relationship between boredom proneness and problematic mobile phone use, in that this relationship was stronger for college students with higher levels of attentional control. CONCLUSIONS These findings illuminate the pathway through which boredom proneness is linked to problematic mobile phone use (i.e., mediation) and the condition on which the relationship between boredom proneness and problematic mobile phone use depends (i.e., moderation). More importantly, this study revealed the potential "double-edged sword" effect of attentional control. These findings have implications for early intervention and prevention of problematic mobile phone use in college students.

• Publication year

  2020

• Venue

  Addictive Behaviours

• Publication date

  2020-05-05

• Fields of study

  Medicine, Psychology

• Identifiers
  DOI 10.1016/j.addbeh.2020.106426PMID 32446143
• External record

  Open on Semantic Scholar

• Source metadata

  Semantic Scholar, PubMed

• No claims are published for this paper.

• No concepts are published for this paper.

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