Investigating Links Between Fear of COVID-19, Neuroticism, Social Networks Use Disorder, and Smartphone Use Disorder Tendencies

Christian Montag; Cornelia Sindermann; Dmitri Rozgonjuk; Shixin Yang; Jon D Elhai; Haibo Yang

doi:10.3389/fpsyg.2021.682837

Investigating Links Between Fear of COVID-19, Neuroticism, Social Networks Use Disorder, and Smartphone Use Disorder Tendencies

Front Psychol. 2021 Aug 2:12:682837. doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2021.682837. eCollection 2021.

Authors

Christian Montag^{1

2}, Cornelia Sindermann¹, Dmitri Rozgonjuk^{1

3}, Shixin Yang^{4

5}, Jon D Elhai⁶, Haibo Yang⁴

Affiliations

¹ Department of Molecular Psychology, Institute of Psychology and Education, Ulm University, Ulm, Germany.
² The Clinical Hospital of Chengdu Brain Science Institute, MOE Key Lab for Neuroinformation, University of Electronic Science and Technology of China, Chengdu, China.
³ Institute of Mathematics and Statistics, University of Tartu, Tartu, Estonia.
⁴ Academy of Psychology and Behavior, Faculty of Psychology, Tianjin Normal University, Tianjin, China.
⁵ School of Psychology, Guizhou Normal University, Guiyang, China.
⁶ Department of Psychology, and Department of Psychiatry, University of Toledo, Toledo, OH, United States.

Abstract

The present study investigates links between fear of COVID-19, the personality trait of neuroticism, social networks use disorder, and smartphone use disorder (SNUD and SmUD, respectively) tendencies. In an online survey, N = 932 participants recruited at a Chinese University (237 males and 695 females) completed self-reports on fear of COVID-19, neuroticism (and other personality traits from the Big Five Inventory-44), the Bergen Social Media Addiction Scale (assessing tendencies toward SNUD), and the Smartphone Addiction Scale short version-assessing individual differences in tendencies toward SmUD. Our findings showed that all variables of main interest were positively correlated with each other. A mediation model suggested that SNUD (in parts) mediated the association between fear of COVID-19 and SmUD. Although neuroticism was robustly correlated with all mentioned variables, no moderation effect could be observed on the investigated fear-of-COVID-19-SNUD-link. The findings of this work provide further evidence that the smartphone itself is only a device giving individuals access to software applications, which might be excessively used. Beyond that, the present data indicate neuroticism to be a risk factor with respect to fear of COVID-19, SNUD, and SmUD, although the study is limited by its cross-sectional study design.

Keywords: Bergen social media addiction scale; COVID-19 pandemic; fear of COVID-19; neuroticism; personality; smartphone addiction; smartphone addiction scale; social media addiction.