Does adolescents’ social anxiety trigger problematic smartphone use, or vice versa? A comparison between problematic and unproblematic smartphone users

Smartphone provides diverse indirect communication channels for users, which may attract people with social anxiety. Due to the high risk of developing social anxiety and problematic smartphone use (PSU) in adolescence, it is important to investigate whether social anxiety will trigger PSU or vice versa among this group in the smartphone era. Also, most previous PSU studies include amounts of unproblematic smartphone users in the analyses, which may "muddy the waters." Participants were 582 adolescent smartphone users (including 201 problematic users) who completed the investigation at time 1 (T1) and time 2 (T2). A bias-corrected factor score path analysis (BCFSPA) was adopted to estimate data with small or moderate sample size. BCFSPA showed that social anxiety at T1 positively predicted PSU at T2 among problematic (vs. unproblematic) smartphone users. Also, PSU at T1 positively predicted social anxiety at T2 among unproblematic (vs. problematic) smartphone users. Our results have identified social anxiety as a risk factor for PSU among adolescent problematic (vs. unproblematic) smartphone users; the compensatory Internet use model combined with the habit theory of addiction can explain this finding. Besides, the dilution effect hypothesis can explain the effect of PSU on social anxiety among unproblematic (vs. problematic) smartphone users.