Association between internet addiction and insomnia among college freshmen: the chain mediation effect of emotion regulation and anxiety and the moderating role of gender

作者：Ye Yu, Li Zhang, Xiaoyou Su, Xinfeng Zhang, Xiaopeng Deng · 发表于：BMC Psychiatry · 年份：2025 · DOI：10.1186/s12888-025-06778-4 · 被引用次数：13 · 研究领域：Impact of Technology on Adolescents、Digital Mental Health Interventions、COVID-19 and Mental Health

BACKGROUND: The advancement of the information age has led to the widespread use of the internet, accompanied by numerous internet-related issues that often correlate with various physical and mental health conditions, particularly among college freshmen. We examined the relationship between internet addiction (IA) and insomnia among these students, using emotion regulation (ER) and anxiety as mediators and gender as a moderating variable. METHODS: This cross-sectional study included 7,353 freshmen from a university in Jingzhou City, Hubei Province, China. Data were collected through an online self-administered questionnaire, including the Internet Addiction Test (IAT), the Emotion Regulation subscale (ER), the Generalized Anxiety Disorder 7-item scale (GAD-7), and the Insomnia Severity Index (ISI). Data analysis was conducted using SPSS 21.0 and PROCESS version 4.1 to test the hypothesized relationships among variables. RESULTS: In our survey, correlation analysis showed that ER was significantly negatively correlated with IA, anxiety, and insomnia; IA was significantly positively correlated with anxiety and insomnia (all p < 0.01). The mediating effect analysis indicated that IA was a significant positive predictor of insomnia. ER and anxiety played a chain - mediating role in the development of insomnia (β = 0.039, 95% confidence interval = 0.035-0.043). The moderating effect analysis showed that the interaction term of IA and gender had a significant negative predictive e...