Longitudinal associations between smartphone multitasking and depressive symptoms in college students
Objective To explore the longitudinal correlation between smartphone multitasking and depressive symptoms,so as to provide an evidence-based basis for promoting the mental health of college students.Methods A total of 967 college students were recruited from one university in Taiyuan,Chongqing,and Shenzhen cities,China,by using multi-stage randomized cluster sampling from October to December 2021 at baseline,and a follow-up survey was conducted in May 2022.Smartphone multitasking behaviors were assessed by means of the Assessment of Smartphone Multitasking for Adolescents(ASMA),and depressive symp-toms were assessed using the Patient Health Questionnaire-9(PHQ-9)among college students.Chi-square tests were performed to compare the differences in depressive symptoms between different groups of demographic characteristics,and binary Logistic regres-sion models were employed to analyze the associations between smartphone multitasking and depressive symptoms among college students.Results The rates of depressive symptoms among college students at baseline and follow-up were 35.2％and 42.3％,re-spectively.Compared to the low level smartphone multitasking index group at baseline,the moderate and high level groups were more likely to experience depressive symptoms at baseline(moderate level group:OR=1.74,95％CI=1.22-2.50,high level group:OR=2.77,95％CI=1.94-3.95)and follow-up(moderate level group:OR=1.41,95％CI=1.01-1.95,high level group:OR=1.64,95％CI=1.17-2.29)(P＜0.05).In addition,compared to the persistently low smartphone multitasking index,increased risk of depressive symptoms was associated with maintaining a moderate-to-high(OR=2.94,95％CI=1.83-4.71),and a higher(OR=2.07,95％CI=1.31-3.27)or lower smartphone multitasking index(OR=2.02,95％CI=1.27-3.19)(P＜0.05).Moreover,higher smartphone multitasking index scores were positively associated with the risk of new-onset depressive symptoms at follow-up(OR=1.87,95％CI=1.07-3.27,P＜0.05).Conclusions Smartphone multitasking behaviors are find to be associated with an in-creased risk of depressive symptoms in college students.There is a need to reduce smartphone multitasking in order to decrease de-pressive symptoms and promote students'mental health.
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