Self-Esteem and Problematic Digital Use in Youth: The Role of Affective Symptoms and Objective Smartphone Behaviors in a Cross-Sectional Study (Preprint)

BACKGROUND Problematic digital use among youth is associated with mental health concerns, yet the affective and behavioral mechanisms linking self-esteem to problematic digital use remain insufficiently characterized. OBJECTIVE To examine whether depressive and anxiety symptoms and objectively measured smartphone behaviors are associated with the relationship between self-esteem and problematic digital use among adolescents and young adults. METHODS This cross-sectional observational study was conducted between April 2022 and January 2023 in academic institutions in Grenoble, France. Participants were 171 adolescents and young adults aged 11 to 25 years using Android smartphones who completed self-report questionnaires alongside passive smartphone monitoring. Measures included self-esteem, depressive symptoms, anxiety symptoms, recreational smartphone time, delay to first connection in the morning, and nighttime digital disconnection (digital sleep). Problematic digital use was modeled as a latent construct encompassing excessive use, emotional regulation, and reactivity and assessed using a validated self-report scale. RESULTS Among 171 participants (meanage, 17.6 years, SD 3.0; 57% female), depressive symptoms mediated the association between self-esteem and problematic digital use (β = −0.33; 95% CI −0.45 to −0.21), with larger indirect effects than anxiety symptoms (β = −0.13; 95% CI −0.22 to −0.04). Recreational smartphone time was positively associated with problematic digital use (β = 0.28), whereas digital sleep was independently associated with lower problematic digital use (β = −0.24). CONCLUSIONS Lower self-esteem was indirectly associated with problematic digital use primarily through depressive symptoms, which showed stronger associations than anxiety symptoms. Objective smartphone behaviors were independently associated with problematic digital use. CLINICALTRIAL This trial was registered at ClinicalTrials.gov (NCT07293208).