Network Analysis of Association Between Problematic Social Network Use and Alexithymia in Freshmen.

Objective: Exploring the core and bridge nodes in problematic social network use and alexithymia among freshmen to provide a basis for understanding the relationship and interventions.

Methods: A total of 4057 first-year students from four universities in Shandong Province were chosen and surveyed with the Problematic Mobile Social Media Use Assessment Questionnaire and the Toronto Alexithymia Scale (TAS). Network analysis was performed using R to estimate the connections between nodes.