Loneliness and Social Anxiety as Predictors of Problematic Phone Use and Compulsive Internet Use Among Youth of Punjab

The rapid growth in the accessibility of technology mediums has resulted in the growing dependency and is associated with Compulsive Internet Use (CIU) and Problematic Phone Use (PPU). The present study was an effort to study the relationship between psychosocial problems like loneliness and social anxiety with problematic phone use (PPU) and compulsive internet use (CIU). It was hypothesized that loneliness and social anxiety would significantly PPU and CIU. A total of 260 participants (149 males and 111 females) within the age range of 17-35 years (M = 23.3, SD 3.01) responded on four standardized questionnaires viz., Smartphone Addiction Scale-Short Version (Kwon et al. in PLoS ONE 8:56936, 2013), Compulsive Internet Use Scale (Meerkerk et al. in Cyberpsychol Behav 12:1-6, 2009), UCLA loneliness scale-version 3 (Russel et al. in J Personal Assess 66:20-40, 1996), and Social Anxiety Questionnaire for Adults (Caballo et al. in Behav Ther 43:313-328, 2012). The regression results showed that loneliness and social anxiety emerged to be significant predictors of Problematic Phone Use (PPU) and Compulsive Internet use (CIU). The findings and implications are discussed in the paper.