The relationship between smartphone addiction, academic procrastination, and anxiety: evidence from a diary-based approach

To understand how academic procrastination, anxiety, and smartphone addiction are related, as well as the mechanisms underlying these relationships, this study constructed a mediation model to investigate the influence of college students' anxiety on their academic procrastination and the media...

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Published in:Acta psychologica Vol. 260; p. 105517
Main Authors: Su, Miaoyan, Zhang, Jiayin, Xu, Yanhua, Hu, Jin
Format: Journal Article
Language:English
Published: Netherlands Elsevier B.V 01.10.2025
Elsevier
Subjects:
Academic procrastination
Adolescent
Adult
Anxiety
Anxiety - psychology
Behavior, Addictive - psychology
China
College students
Diary method
Female
Humans
Internet Addiction Disorder - psychology
Male
Procrastination
Smartphone
Smartphone addiction
Students - psychology
Universities
Young Adult
China
Anxiety
College students
Smartphone addiction
Diary method
Academic procrastination
ISSN:0001-6918, 1873-6297, 1873-6297
Online Access:Get full text
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Summary:To understand how academic procrastination, anxiety, and smartphone addiction are related, as well as the mechanisms underlying these relationships, this study constructed a mediation model to investigate the influence of college students' anxiety on their academic procrastination and the mediating effect of smartphone addiction. The study randomly selected 306 students from a university in Jiangxi Province and conducted a 10-day diary follow-up using the Smartphone Addiction Scale-Short Version, Academic Procrastination Scale and Anxiety Scale to capture daily dynamic data and distinguish between two-level effects. According to correlation analyses, academic procrastination was significantly impacted negatively by anxiety and significantly positively by smartphone addiction at the inter-individual level. At the intra-individual level, anxiety had a significant positive correlation with smartphone addiction and academic procrastination, and smartphone addiction had a significant positive correlation with academic procrastination. The internal level of individuals focuses on the variable fluctuations of the same subject at different time points, while the inter individual level focuses on the stable differences between different subjects. After adjusting for age, gender, and grade level, additional mediation analyses using SPSS 26.0 and Mplus 8.3 revealed that anxiety had a direct predictive influence on students' academic procrastination and an indirect predictive effect through smartphone addiction. The research demonstrated a causal link between academic procrastination and anxiety, providing a fresh viewpoint on the prevalence of anxiety, academic procrastination, and smartphone addiction in the student population and a theoretical basis for the development of interventions.
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ISSN:0001-6918
1873-6297
1873-6297
DOI:10.1016/j.actpsy.2025.105517