Accepted for/Published in: JMIR Mental Health
Date Submitted: May 28, 2024
Date Accepted: Dec 21, 2024
A cross-sectional study on self differentiation of young people in the physical and virtual worlds by Euclidean distance analysis: Exploring the relationship between digitalization, similarities of personal attributes and mental health
ABSTRACT
Background:
Increasing observation and evidence suggest that the process of digitalization could have profound impact to the development of human mind and self, with potential mental health consequences. Self differentiation is important in human identity formation, which is believed to be involved in the process of digitalization.
Objective:
This study investigated the relationship between digitalization and personal attributes in the actual selves in the physical and virtual worlds.
Methods:
A community cohort of 397 subjects between the age 15 to 24 was recruited consecutively over about 3 months. Assessment was conducted upon the indicators of digitalization (smartphone use time, online leisure online and age of first smartphone ownership), smartphone addiction, 14 selected personal attributes in the actual self in the physical and virtual world, stress/emotional symptomatology and personality traits. Euclidean distance analysis between the personal attributes in the actual selves in the physical and virtual worlds for the similarities of the two selves was performed in the analysis.
Results:
The current primary findings are the negative correlations between the similarity of the personal attributes in the physical actual self and virtual actual self, and smartphone use time, smartphone addiction as well as anxiety symptomatology respectively (p<0.05 to p<0.01).
Conclusions:
The current findings provide empirical evidence for the importance of maintaining a congruent self in both the physical and virtual worlds, regulating smartphone use time, preventing smartphone addiction and safeguarding mental health.
Citation
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Copyright
© The authors. All rights reserved. This is a privileged document currently under peer-review/community review (or an accepted/rejected manuscript). Authors have provided JMIR Publications with an exclusive license to publish this preprint on it's website for review and ahead-of-print citation purposes only. While the final peer-reviewed paper may be licensed under a cc-by license on publication, at this stage authors and publisher expressively prohibit redistribution of this draft paper other than for review purposes.