Hew, Yuan Chong, and Chew, Peter K.H. (2025) Distress Tolerance as a Risk Factor for Specific Internet‑Use Disorders. Journal of Technology in Behavioral Science. (In Press)

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Abstract

Existing research on distress tolerance has focused on non-technological addictions and general Internet addiction; however, none explored its association with specific Internet-use addictions. This study aimed to investigate whether distress tolerance could be a risk factor for three specific Internet-use disorders: Internet gaming disorder (IGD), problematic social media use (PSMU), and problematic pornography use (PPU) guided by the interaction of person-affect-cognitionexecution (I-PACE) model. As emotional regulation and distress tolerance are related but distinct constructs, emotional regulation was controlled in the current study. It was hypothesized lower distress tolerance would predict higher severity in IGD (H1), PSMU (H2), and PPU (H3) after controlling for demographics (i.e., age and gender) and emotional regulation. Upon ethics approval from the university’s human research ethics committee, 151 participants (62.9% females; mean age = 27.35, SD = 6.41) were recruited. Participants completed scales on distress tolerance, emotional regulation, IGD, PSMU, and PPU. Hierarchical multiple regression was conducted thrice for each outcome variable, with demographics entered in Model 1, emotional regulation subscales entered in Model 2, and distress tolerance subscales entered in Model 3. Results revealed lower distress tolerance significantly predicted higher severity in IGD above and beyond demographics and emotional regulation, but not for PSMU and PPU. This suggests distress tolerance may be a more relevant risk factor for IGD than PPU and PSMU. Limitations pertain to lack of comprehensiveness measuring psychological distress. Longitudinal studies are recommended for future research.

Item ID:	84653
Item Type:	Article (Research - C1)
ISSN:	2366-5963
Keywords:	Distress tolerance; Internet gaming disorder; Problematic social media use; Problematic pornography use; Emotional regulation
Copyright Information:	This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article’s Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article’s Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this licence, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
Date Deposited:	18 Feb 2025 00:35
FoR Codes:	52 PSYCHOLOGY > 5203 Clinical and health psychology > 520302 Clinical psychology @ 100%
SEO Codes:	28 EXPANDING KNOWLEDGE > 2801 Expanding knowledge > 280121 Expanding knowledge in psychology @ 100%
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