Vocational self-stigma and problematic smartphone use: self-regulatory fatigue as an indirect pathway and professional identity as a second-stage moderator

Problematic smartphone use is common among young people, and research on its antecedents has focused mainly on individual dispositions and transient emotional states. Less is known about whether self-stigma, a chronic and group-based devaluation of the self, is linked to problematic smartphone use through self-regulatory fatigue, and whether professional identity weakens that link. We examined these questions in a cross-sectional survey of 1,352 students at Chinese higher vocational colleges, whose educational track carries a persistent status penalty. Vocational self-stigma was associated with greater self-regulatory fatigue, which in turn was associated with more problematic smartphone use [indirect effect = 0.127, 95% CI (0.099, 0.157)]. This indirect association was larger when measurement error was modeled, remained significant across alternative scale compositions, covariate sets, and analytic samples, and was smaller but still significant when differences between cities of response were held constant. Professional identity moderated the second stage of the pathway: the association between fatigue and problematic use weakened as professional identity increased [B = -0.142, 95% CI (-0.228, -0.053)] but remained significant for nearly all students, including those with a strong professional identity. The corresponding first-stage interaction was close to zero [B = -0.008, 95% CI (-0.068, 0.053)]. Items reflecting awareness of public devaluation and items reflecting self-devaluation showed similar indirect associations. The findings are consistent with a view of vocational self-stigma as a source of regulatory strain and suggest that professional identity is related to how students act under that strain more than to how closely self-stigma is tied to it. Longitudinal and intervention studies are needed to establish the temporal order of these associations.