The Role of Electronic Sports as a Moderator on the Causal Relationship Between Alexithymia and Social Loneliness in High School Students (Khorasan Razavi)

Background and Objective: The aim of this study is to examine the impact of alexithymia on social loneliness in high school students with the moderating role of electronic sports and to present a model. Methods and Materials: This research is descriptive-survey in strategy and causal in hypothesis formation. Data collection involved standard questionnaires used in reputable international and domestic studies, including the Toronto Alexithymia Scale, the Lee and Hyun Social Loneliness Scale, and the Electronic Sports Scale. To assess the construct validity of the questionnaires, first-order and second-order confirmatory factor analyses were utilized. The internal reliability of the questionnaire items was measured using Cronbach's alpha, which, as observed in this study, exceeded 0.7, indicating acceptable reliability. The statistical population comprised all male high school students in District 2 of the Mashhad Education Department. For empirical and practical investigation, a sample of 400 male students was selected. In this study, SPSS version 25 was used for descriptive statistics and examining the relationships between research variables, while Smart PLS version 3 was used for structural equation modeling to design the research model. Findings: The findings indicated that alexithymia, external-oriented thinking, and difficulty in describing feelings all significantly affect social loneliness. Additionally, the findings showed that electronic sports do not have a moderating effect on the causal relationship between alexithymia and social loneliness. According to the results, the SRMR fit index was 0.078, which is below the 0.08 threshold at the 0.05 significance level, indicating that the structural model of the research has a good fit. Conclusion: The study confirms that alexithymia significantly impacts social loneliness among high school students. However, electronic sports do not moderate this relationship. These findings suggest that enhancing emotional awareness and expression skills may reduce social loneliness in students.