Smartphone Addiction and Social Support: A Three-year Longitudinal Study

• Main Authors: Juan Herrero, Andrea Torres, Pep Vivas, Alberto Urueña
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: Colegio Oficial de Psicólogos de Madrid 2019-03-01
• Series: Psychosocial Intervention
• Subjects: Longitudinal studies; Adult population; Empirical research; Social support; Smartphone addiction; Psychosocial well-being; Growth modeling
• Online Access: https://journals.copmadrid.org/pi/archivos/1132-0559-inter-pi2019a6.pdf

For some years now, scholars have been exploring some of the negative consequences for the psychosocial well-being of users that the rapid incorporation of smartphones into our lives has caused. Most of the empirical studies to date are cross-sectional and are carried out with participants from convenience samples, which has been a limitation in this field. In this study, we evaluated the evolution over three years of smartphone addiction and social support in 241 Spanish users of a representative national sample. The results of the analysis of latent growth and growth mixture modeling indicate that both trajectories are interconnected: the more addiction decreases, the more social support increases. In addition, high levels of addiction and relatively low levels of support remained stable over time in a group of users. Users of this high-addiction group would represent a trend in the digital society characterized by higher rates of loneliness and technological dependence.