Psychological Development and Education ›› 2025, Vol. 41 ›› Issue (4): 579-588.doi: 10.16187/j.cnki.issn1001-4918.2025.04.14

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The Bidirectional Association between Negative Life Events and Mobile Addiction among University Freshmen: The Role of Perceived Social Support

TIAN Yu1,2, DING Hongjun1, GUO Zongxin3   

  1. 1. School of Marxism, Qingdao University of Science and Technology, Qingdao 266061;
    2. State Key Laboratory of Cognitive Neuroscience and Learning, Faculty of Psychology, Beijing Normal University, Beijing 100875;
    3. School of Psychology, Shandong Normal University, Jinan 250399
  • Published:2025-07-12

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Abstract: In order to investigate the reciprocal association between negative life events and mobile addiction among university freshmen and the bidirectional mediating role of perceived social support, 1511 freshmen from 5 universities were surveyed with a one-year gap by the Adolescent Self-rating Life Events Checklist (ASLEC), Perceived Social Support Scale (PSSS) and Mobile Phone Addiction Index Scale (MPAI). The results of cross-legged analysis showed that, after controlling the confounding effects of gender, household registration, age and annual household income, (1) Negative life events and mobile addiction positively predicted each other across time; (2) Perceived social support played a bidirectional mediating role across time in the association between negative life events and mobile addiction. The documented findings suggest that improving perceived social support of university freshmen is important for breaking the vicious cycle of negative life events and mobile addiction.

Key words: mobile addiction, perceived social support, negative life events, university freshmen, cross-legged analysis

CLC Number: 

  • B844
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