Are Cyberchondria and Intolerance of Uncertainty Related to Smartphone Addiction?

Aleksandar Vujić; Marija Volarov; Milan Latas; Zsolt Demetrovics; Orsolya Kiraly; Attila Szabo

doi:10.1007/s11469-023-01054-6

Are Cyberchondria and Intolerance of Uncertainty Related to Smartphone Addiction?

Int J Ment Health Addict. 2023 May 3:1-19. doi: 10.1007/s11469-023-01054-6. Online ahead of print.

Authors

Aleksandar Vujić^{1

2}, Marija Volarov³, Milan Latas⁴, Zsolt Demetrovics^{2

5}, Orsolya Kiraly², Attila Szabo^{2

6}

Affiliations

¹ Doctoral School of Psychology, Faculty of Education and Psychology, ELTE Eötvös Loránd University, Budapest, Hungary.
² Institute of Psychology, ELTE Eötvös Loránd University, Budapest, Hungary.
³ Department of Psychology, Faculty of Sport and Psychology, Educons University, Novi Sad, Serbia.
⁴ Faculty of Medicine, University of Belgrade, Belgrade, Serbia.
⁵ Centre of Excellence in Responsible Gaming, University of Gibraltar, Gibraltar, Gibraltar.
⁶ Institute of Health Promotion and Sport Sciences, ELTE Eötvös Loránd University, Budapest, Hungary.

Abstract

Smartphones are a medium for performing online activities, and one such activity could be the compulsive online health information search - cyberchondria. This study aimed to test whether cyberchondria and intolerance of uncertainty (IU) positively predict smartphone addiction (SA), adjusted for age, gender, daily use duration, the reason for using smartphones, and symptoms of anxiety and depression. The sample consisted of 471 adults (55.2% women) from the general population without chronic diseases (M_age = 38.67). Regression analysis showed that IU was a positive predictor of SA (β = .17, p < .001), as well as cyberchondria (β = .14, p < .001), which had a unique contribution to the explanation of SA, relative to IU. Other significant predictors were average daily smartphone use and entertainment use, the latter being the strongest predictor in the model. These results revealed cyberchondria as a unique predictor of SA.

Keywords: Behavioral addiction; Cyberchondria; Intolerance of uncertainty; Problematic smartphone Use; Smartphone addiction.