The Italian version of the Young's Internet Addiction Test (IAT) was administered online to a sample of Italian chatters (n = 236) who were different in terms of gender, age, and occupation. Results revealed that young users are more at-risk subjects for Internet addiction than adults, perceiving a compromised social and individual quality of their life that led them to make a compensatory usage of the Internet. Similarly, employed users perceive their social and individual quality of life as more compromised by the Internet than students. Moreover, subjects who declared spending much time online obtained IAT scores higher than others in all the IAT subscales. Finally, nightly users are more at-risk subjects for developing an Internet addiction disorder, diminishing their individual quality of life and disabling their time control.

The Italian government adopted measures to prevent the spread of coronavirus 2019 (COVID-19) infection from March 9, 2020, to May 4, 2020 and imposed a phase of social distancing and self-isolation to all adult citizens. Although justified and necessary, psychologists question the impact of this process of COVID-19 isolation on the mental health of the population. Hence, this paper investigated the relationship between neuroticism, boredom, fantasy engagement, perceived control over time, and the fear of COVID-19. Specifically, we performed a cross-sectional study aimed at testing an integrative moderated mediation model. Our model assigned the boredom to the mediation role and both the fantasy engagement and perceived control of time to the role of moderators in the relationship between neuroticism and the fear of COVID-19. A sample of 301 subjects, mainly women (68.8%), aged between 18 and 57 years (M_age = 22.12 years; SD = 6.29), participated in a survey conducted in the 1st-week lockdown phase 2 in Italy from May 7 to 18, 2020. Results suggested that neuroticism is crucial in coping with the COVID-19 pandemic, in line with literature showing high neurotic people having greater emotional reactivity and scarce resources to manage stress. We also found that people with high neuroticism tend to feel bored, and the relationship between neuroticism and boredom seems enhanced if one is involved in negative fantasies. Therefore, this result could also explain the positive effect between boredom and fear of COVID-19 we found in the current study. However, our data show that perceived control over time moderates the association between boredom and fear toward COVID-19. Having a high perceived control over time allows people to reduce boredom’s effect on fear of COVID-19. In conclusion, we retain that psychological treatment programs could improve the individuals’ perceived control over time to modulate anxiety toward the fear of COVID-19 and promote psychological well-being.

This study investigates the role of personality factors as predictors of Facebook usage. Data concerning Facebook usage and personality factors from 654 Facebook users were gathered using a web survey. Using path analysis, the results showed Openness was a predictor of Facebook early adoption, Conscientiousness with sparing use, Extraversion with long sessions and abundant friendships, and Neuroticism with high frequency of sessions. The possible role of Agreeableness in predicting low session frequency and friendships needs further validation.

The studies reported analyze the factorial structure of Facebook Addiction Italian Questionnaire (FAIQ), a variant of 20-item Young's Internet Addiction Test (IAT). In Study 1, we tested FAIQ psychometric properties using exploratory factor analysis (EFA). In Study 2, we performed a confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) to verify the FAIQ factorial structure identified through EFA. Results from CFA confirm the presence of a four-factor model accounting for 58 percent of total variance, plus a general higher order factor that best fits the data. Further relationships between FAIQ factor scores, personality, and Facebook usage have been explored.