Abstract
As more adolescents are developing a stronger dependence on their mobile devices, smartphone addiction has become a common concern among both the public and researchers. We aimed to examine whether alienation mediated the association between peer relationships and smartphone addiction in adolescents and whether this mediating process was moderated by sex. Our study included 555 adolescent participants (261 boys and 294 girls). The results indicated that peer relationships were negatively associated with smartphone addiction and that alienation mediated this relationship. Furthermore, sex moderated both the direct and indirect associations between peer relationships and smartphone addiction in adolescents. Specifically, in the second stage of the mediation process, the association between alienation and smartphone addiction became nonsignificant for boys, and the direct association between peer relationships and smartphone addiction became nonsignificant for girls. These findings illustrate that peer relationships are a protective factor for adolescent smartphone addiction and that this dynamic has significant sex differences.
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Data Availability
The datasets generated and/or analyzed during the current study are available from the corresponding author upon reasonable request.
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Acknowledgements
The present study was supported by the Philosophy and Social Sciences Planning Project of Shanxi Province in 2020(2020YJ146), the key project of Philosophy and Social Science Research in Shanxi Province (SSKLZDKT2018115), and Education and Science Programming Projects in Shanxi Province (GH-18048).
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Wang, W., Liu, J., Liu, Y. et al. Peer relationship and adolescents’ smartphone addiction: the mediating role of alienation and the moderating role of sex. Curr Psychol 42, 22976–22988 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12144-022-03309-2
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s12144-022-03309-2