ORIGINAL RESEARCH article
Front. Psychiatry
Sec. Addictive Disorders
Volume 16 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/fpsyt.2025.1603860
The relationship between self-compassion and mobile phone addiction in university students: A chain mediation model
Provisionally accepted
- 1Guangdong University of Petrochemical Technology, Maoming, Guangdong, China
- 2East China Normal University, Shanghai, China
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Background: Currently, the uncertainty and high pressure of the social environment, as well as the popularity of the Internet and mobile phones, have made mobile phone addiction a prevalent phenomenon among university students. This study explored the relationship between selfcompassion and mobile phone addiction in university students and the mediating effects of negative attention bias and self-regulatory fatigue.The study used convenience sampling to recruit 800 Chinese university students to complete the Chinese version of the Self-Compassion Scale, the Negative Attention Bias Scale, the Self-Regulatory Fatigue Scale, and the Mobile Phone Addiction Scale. SPSS 24.0 and the Process 3.4 macro program were employed to generate the descriptive statistics and conduct the correlation analyses and mediating effect tests on the data.The analyses revealed that self-compassion negatively predicted mobile phone addiction.Negative attention bias and self-regulatory fatigue individually mediated the effect of selfcompassion on mobile phone addiction. Negative attention bias and self-regulatory fatigue also exhibited a chain mediation effect.The results of the study, from the perspective of self-compassion, have theoretical and practical implications for how to intervene in the mobile phone addiction of university students as well as to protect their physical and mental health.
Keywords: self-compassion, negative attention bias, self-regulatory fatigue, Mobile phone addiction, Chain mediation model
Received: 04 Apr 2025; Accepted: 23 May 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Qiang, Jin, Li and Xu. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence: Cheng Xu, East China Normal University, Shanghai, China
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