Anxiety symptoms associated with problematic smartphone use severity: The mediation role of COVID-19 anxiety

Background: The Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic is regarded as the biggest global health crisis in recent decades. The changes in major life domains due to infection control strategies resemble the functional impairment consequential to emotional distress and place many people at greater risk of psychiatric conditions. Meanwhile, the COVID-19 pandemic and associated social distancing have widely increased the usage of smartphone to receive the COVID-19 related information in the past one year. However, the excessive use of smartphone has deleterious consequences. The current study investigated general anxiety symptoms and COVID-19 anxiety, and their impact on problematic smartphone use (PSPU) severity. Methods: Adults aged 18–75 years were recruited by stratified, probability sampling from a database representative of the population. Among 1080 Hong Kong Chinese (age [LR1] [MTWM2] 18–75 years), a cross-sectional web-based survey was conducted between July 23 and August 25 2020 (the period of the third wave outbreak of COVID-19 in Hong Kong).  Participants were required to assessed the measures including the Depression Anxiety Stress Scale-21, Generalized Anxiety Disorder Scale-7, and Smartphone Addiction Scale-Short Version.[LR3] [MTWM4]  Structural equation modeling (SEM) was used to evaluate the associations among general anxiety symptoms, COVID-19 anxiety and severity of PSPU by the software Amos 22.0. Results: Using established cut-off scores, our results found that prevalence of at least moderate anxiety level in around 22% of participants. Using structural equation modeling, both general anxiety symptoms and COVID-19 anxiety were associated with PSPU severity. Moreover, COVID-19 anxiety partially mediated relations between predisposing general anxiety with PSPU severity. Conclusions: This study provides initial data on mental health status of people affected by COVID-19. It also investigates the relations between COVID-19 anxiety with PSPU severity as a coping mechanism.