A Seven-Year Follow-Up of Smartphone Addiction and Psychological and Social Adjustment in the Adult Spanish...

Objective: Our goal is to understand the association between problematic or addictive smartphone use and the psychological (i.e., depressive symptoms) and social adjustment (i.e., social support) of Spanish adults. Method: We used the full dataset from 2016 until the end of the follow-up period in 2023 from a series of surveys conducted by the Cybersecurity and Confidence in Spanish Households National Survey (CCSHNS), which was carried out by the National Observatory of Telecommunications and Information Society (ONTSI) of the Spanish Ministry for Digital Transformation and Public Service. Results: Inferential analyses performed using latent growth curve models demonstrated that the increase in smartphone addiction symptoms was significantly correlated with an increase in depressive symptoms and a decrease in social support over time. Furthermore, survival curve analysis demonstrated that the probability of being classified as a smartphone addict was higher among participants with higher levels of depression and lower social support at the start of the study. The study's findings revealed statistical relationships between the development of smartphone addiction symptoms and poorer psychological (i.e., increasing depressive symptoms) and social (i.e., decreasing social support) adjustment across all gender and age groups, except for the oldest group in the sample (over 54 years old). Conclusions: The findings provide insights into how the psychological and social adjustment of citizens in highly digitized societies is negatively related to excessive use of smartphones.