DOI: 10.53850/joltida.1880252 ISSN: 2458-8350

Emotional Intelligence and Emotion Regulation as Mediators Between Smartphone Addiction and Psychological Resilience

Gülten Feryal Gündüz, Sevil Momeni Shabanı, Kerim Ünal
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Problematic smartphone use is increasingly common in adolescence and can impair the attention and cognitive control that learning depends on, which makes the emotional processes underlying such use an important target for study. This research examined whether psychological resilience predicts problematic smartphone use in adolescents and tested emotional intelligence and emotion regulation as two parallel mediators of that relationship. Participants were 561 middle school students (286 female, 275 male) in grades 5–8, aged 10–15 years (M = 12.26, SD = 1.27). Using a relational survey design, the data were analyzed with a parallel multiple mediation model. Psychological resilience directly and negatively predicted problematic smartphone use and positively predicted both emotional intelligence and emotion regulation. The two mediators operated in opposite directions: emotional intelligence carried a protective (negative) indirect effect, whereas emotion regulation, contrary to expectations, carried a risk-increasing (positive) indirect effect. These findings suggest that problematic smartphone use should be addressed multidimensionally through emotional processes, and they point in particular to resilience- and emotional-intelligence-based approaches for preventive intervention.

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