Phubbing behaviors and psychological well-being: correlates and sociodemographic profiles in university students from Mexico, Colombia, and Peru

The main objective of the study was to identify the degree of association between phubbing behaviors and psychological well-being in university students from Mexico, Colombia and Peru. There was a sample of 1125 participants, who responded to the Phubbing Scale and the Psychological Well-being Scale for Adults (BIEPS-A), which demonstrated adequate psychometric properties for the sample, after the confirmatory factor analysis for validity and the Alpha of Cronbach for reliability. This was confirmed by performing a statistical analysis using the Structural Equations Model (SEM). Within the results, it is observed that phubbing have a high degree of association with psychological well-being in university students from Mexico, Colombia and Peru. (-0.515, Sig. 0.001). The above is fully confirmed when a statistical analysis was carried out using SEM, reinforcing what was found about the high degree of association between phubbing and psychological well-being, where the p value is less than 0.01, which means that there is an inverse relationship and significant association between the variables studied. There is an adequate fit of the proposed indices: the error of approximation (RMSEA) for Phubbing (0.080) and Psychological Well-being (0.054) reports an adequate difference between what was expected and what was actually found. The SRMR indicator for Phubbing (0.052) and Well-being (0.041) confirms that the differences between the real data and the model are minimal. The TLI for Phubbing (0.859) and Psychological Well-being (0.909) demonstrates adequate results. The CFI for Phubbing (0.893) and Psychological Well-being (0.931) demonstrates to some extent that this model is adequate and works much better than a simple or basic one. Linear regression analysis yielded a self-determination coefficient of R² = 0.052, with a significance level of p ≤ 0.001. Furthermore, the model coefficients were t = -7.89, with a significance level of p < 0.001. For the population studied, Phubbing and psychological well-being variables have an inverse and significant association, which means that if one increases the other it decreases at the same time, presenting consistent and reliable statistical evidence to affirm this. The association of the two variables studied only indicates that, somehow they move together, although one cannot explain to the other. This was confirmed when performing the analysis through the SEM model in which the structure of that relationship was found that did not explain the causality of phubbing about psychological well-being.