Caught in the web: how nomophobia mediates the link between neuroticism and phubbing

The main purpose of the study is to examine the mediating role of nomophobia in the relationship between neurotic tendencies and phubbing levels of university students. A total of 730 (Female = 499, Male = 231) undergraduate and associate degree students studying at 3 different universities in the 2020-2021 academic year constitute the research group of this study. The research data were collected with tools: Personal Information Form, Horney-Coolidge Tridimensional Inventory, Nomophobia Scale and Phubbing Scale. According to the results obtained in the study, although the aggressive tendency has a significant relationship with phubbing, it does not explain it in the final model. However, according to the final model, the aggressive tendency indirectly explains phubbing through nomophobia. According to the findings, docile tendency, aggressive tendency, and nomophobia predict phubbing at the level of 52.9%. In addition, it was concluded that docile and aggressive tendencies significantly predict nomophobia at the level of 29.2%. When the results of the correlation analysis were examined, all variables were found to be significantly related to each other, except for the relationship between disconnected tendency and phubbing in the study.