Over the last decades, the number of smartphone owners has been constantly increasing to reach 83.72% of the world’s population in 2022 (compared to 49.40% in 2016) [
1], with the highest percentage of smartphone users being adolescent students (high school graduate or less) [
1]. Smartphones are practical, and provide easy, convenient access to many services including unrestricted communication with others, academic materials access, and leisure online activities. In particular, smartphones have offered adolescents opportunity to develop their self-identity and personal autonomy, establish interpersonal relationships, be creative, and entertain [
2,
3]. All these attractive attributes and its non-restricted use by space and time have led to the emergence of addictive smartphone behaviors, especially at a young age [
4].
SA among adolescent students
Adolescence is a critical period of heightened biological vulnerability to addiction, and of onset of addictive disorders [
5,
6]. Previous studies investigating smartphone addiction (SA) using the most widely used measure (the Smartphone Addiction Scale-Short Version, SAS-SV) revealed high prevalence rates of SA worldwide among early adolescent students (e.g., 16.9% in Switzerland [
7], 22.8% in China [
8], 26.61% in Korea [
9], 36.9% in Turkey [
10], 37.1% in Iran [
11], 42.9% in Brazil [
12], 55.8% in Morocco [
13], and 62.6% in the Philippines [
14]). Using the same scale, we could found a study in Lebanon that surveyed young adults of the general population (aged 18 to 29 years), and found that 46.9% of participants had SA [
15]. However, as far as we are aware, no prior studies have been interested in evaluating SA in Lebanese adolescent students.
Increased evidence supports the detrimental effects of SA that became significant and growing social and public health problems [
16]. SA has been shown to negatively impact the students’ mental health, and to be linked to a variety of psychological problems including anxiety, depression, stress [
17,
18], sleep problems [
19], poor academic performance [
20], peer relationship problems, self-harm and even suicidal ideation and behaviors [
21,
22]. Another potential negative consequence that is gaining attention, due to its serious impacts on adolescents’ lives, is aggression [
23]. Despite all these harmful effects, research related to this topic remains to date limited [
24]. We join the view of Wilmer et al. who claimed that “it is crucial to understand how smartphone technology affects us so that we can take the steps necessary to mitigate the potential negative consequences” [
25]; and we point to the necessity of deeply understanding how SA is related to poor socio-behavioral outcomes so that we can take the measures needed to overcome them.
SA and aggression
According to Buss and Perry [
26], aggression is classified into four dimensions : physical and verbal aggressions (i.e., instrumental component), hostility (i.e., cognitive component), and anger (i.e., affective component). Extensive research highlighted that aggressive behaviors, which refer to any observable act intended to inflict harm to others [
27‐
29], are highly prevalent and represent an integral part of adolescents’ daily lives [
30‐
32]. For instance, a large study from eight countries and 14,967 in-school adolescents aged 10–19 years revealed that 53.7% of participants exhibited interpersonal violence, among them 29.2% and 43.2% reported physical fighting and physical attacks, respectively [
33]. Lebanese adolescents are more prone to engage in aggression given the environment saturated with violence in which they grow up and live [
34]. A previous study among 568 Lebanese adolescents aged between 15 and 18 years revealed that 34.0% and 31.9% had moderate and high aggression respectively [
35]. Indeed, the political instability, deteriorating economy and ongoing conflicts that Lebanon has known in the past years resulted in increased violence rates in schools and streets; that have gone so far as to be engaged in armed conflicts [
34,
36].
Empirical studies have identified various risk factors of aggression in adolescence [
37], mainly gender (boys display more physical aggression than girls) [
38,
39], mental health disorders (most notably disruptive behavior disorders and attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), alexithymia, anxiety and depression) [
40,
41], family characteristics including single-parent household and divorced parents [
42], and peer factors involving parental divorce [
43], peer rejection, bullying, and loneliness [
44]. Moreover, during adolescence, developmentally normative changes in social relationships, including decreasing parental supervision, increasing influence of peers and engaging in new risky behaviors (e.g. alcohol drinking, drug use and smoking) may also elevate risk for aggression [
45,
46]. In addition, the adolescent brain evolves its capability to organize, regulate impulses, and weigh risks and rewards; however, these changes can make adolescents highly vulnerable to risk-taking behavior [
47]. More particularly, studies showed that increased amygdala volume and decreased leftward asymmetry of the anterior cingulate cortex were associated with increased duration of aggressive behaviors during the interpersonal interactions [
48].
A large body of correlational research has shown that SA is significantly related to aggressive behaviors. For example, positive correlations have been found between problematic cellular phone use and a number of behavioral problems, including aggression, in Taiwanese adolescent students [
49]. Similarly, problematic smartphone use has been shown to be associated with aggression and hostility among young adults in Switzerland [
50]. A Korean study by Um et al. showed that smartphone dependency (as assessed using a scale by Lee et al. [
51]) significantly correlated with aggression among middle school students, suggesting that a “careful use of smartphones is necessary” in this population [
23]. Another Korean study by Wee and Kang found that many forms of addiction (i.e., alcohol, gambling and SA) are significantly related to aggression [
52]. A study by Khoo and Yang conducted among Singaporean students found that SA is a potential risk factor for the hostility facet of aggression [
53]. In sum, most of the evidence came from Asian and Western countries, and supports a positive association between SA and aggression. According to Zarei [
54], problematic smartphone use is one of the major variables affecting the aggressive behavior of students.
Aggression among early adolescents represents a serious problem that can significantly impede their development and lead to major clinical and social concerns, including school violence between peers [
55], school drop-out [
56,
57], substance abuse [
57], physical violence and crime perpetration later in adulthood [
56,
58,
59], as well as future economic difficulties and health problems [
60]. This wide range of possible negative outcomes highlight that this topic deserves careful consideration at the scientific, clinical and policy levels.
Another substantial factor that can drive aggression among adolescents is cognitive functioning. It is well established that cognitive skills and functions are determinant in regulating adolescents’ thoughts and actions [
61]. It is thus understandable that cognitive impairment poses a major risk of aggressive thoughts and behaviors. Heavy smartphone users would be highly prone to report cognitive failures during everyday life [
62]. Some authors even suggested that the mere presence and/or the simple reminder of one’s smartphone could highly and adversely affect students’ cognitive functioning and performance [
63].
On the other hand, cognitive impairment has been demonstrated as one of the negative consequences of SA [
25,
64,
65]. Although research concerning the cognitive effects of smartphone use is still quite limited and longitudinal evidence is scant, a literature review by Wilmer et al. [
25] showed that smartphones can be detrimental to a variety of cognitive domains, including mnemonic functioning, attentional capacities, and tendency to delay gratification. A more recent review by Liebherr et al. [
64] found that smartphone use impacts working memory, inhibition, attention, among other cognitive functions. Regarding the student population in particular, a study from Singapore found that smartphone overuse impaired students’ cognitive abilities (i.e., executive functions) [
66]. In Turkey, SA has been found to negatively affect students’ cognitive flexibility [
67].
Given that both SA and cognitive function are involved in aggression, we suggest that cognitive function could play an indirect role in fostering the relationship between SA and aggression. Investigating the cognitive function effects could provide valuable information about how SA can affect early adolescent students’ brain and behaviors during a period of increased developmental plasticity. Only a few mediators have been previously examined in the relationship between SA and aggression among early adolescent students (e.g., peer attachment, ego-resilience, parenting behavior; [
23]); however, to our knowledge no studies have explored the mediating role of cognitive function despite its great importance during this life period.
The present research
To date, there is little amount of research focused on the relation between smartphone use and its subsequent socio-behavioral outcomes [
53]. Khoo and Yang [
53] recently suggested that, among the various aspects of smartphone use, SA in particular is potentially impactful to students’ aggression risk, and thus requires more research and targeted interventions. We decided to perform this study for several reasons. First, although an increasing number of studies supported the notion that SA could predict adolescents’ aggression, only a few studies have attempted to test the mediating effects of personal factors in the association between SA and aggressive behaviors, which has substantially restrained the development of interventions [
68]. Second, prior research examining the relation SA and aggression involved children, primary school students [
69,
70], or young-adult university students [
71]; whereas, there are a few or no studies conducted among early-adolescent high school students despite being particularly vulnerable to develop both addictive and aggressive behaviors with long-lasting consequences [
72,
73]. Third, as previously said, the vast majority of studies on this topic emerged from Asia and the developed world, with no studies from the low-middle-income countries of the Middle East and North Africa region. Given that the findings related to both SA [
71] and aggression [
74] might vary cross-culturally, we believe that the present study has an original value and contributes to the literature by adding data from an unexplored country and region. Based on these gaps identified in the existing literature, our study is intended to verify whether cognitive functions have indirect effects on the relationship between SA and aggression among high-school students in the context of Lebanese culture.