MétaCan
Menu
Back to cohort
Record W4407011382 · doi:10.2196/60747

Exploring the Differentiation of Self-Concepts in the Physical and Virtual Worlds Using Euclidean Distance Analysis and Its Relationship With Digitalization and Mental Health Among Young People: Cross-Sectional Study

2025· article· en· W4407011382 on OpenAlexvenueno aff
Kai Tai Chan, Christy Lai Ming Hui, Charlton Cheung, Yi Nam Suen, Stephanie Ming Yin Wong, Corine Sau Man Wong, Bosco PH Kam, Eric Chen

Bibliographic record

VenueJMIR Mental Health · 2025
Typearticle
Languageen
FieldSocial Sciences
TopicImpact of Technology on Adolescents
Canadian institutionsnot available
Fundersnot available
KeywordsMetaversePsychologyPersonalityMental healthSmartphone addictionAnxietyPersonal developmentPersonal identitySelfApplied psychologyAddictionSocial psychologyClinical psychologyVirtual realityComputer sciencePsychiatryPsychotherapist

Abstract

fetched live from OpenAlex

BACKGROUND: Increasing observation and evidence suggest that the process of digitalization could have profound impact to the development of human mind and self, with potential mental health consequences. Self-differentiation is important in human identity and self-concept formation, which is believed to be involved in the process of digitalization. OBJECTIVE: This study aimed to investigate the relationship between digitalization and personal attributes in the actual selves in the physical and virtual worlds. METHODS: A community cohort of 397 participants aged 15 to 24 years old was recruited consecutively over about 3 months. Assessment was conducted upon the indicators of digitalization (smartphone use time, leisure online time, and age of first smartphone ownership), smartphone addiction, 14 selected personal attributes in the actual selves in the physical and virtual worlds, psychiatric symptomatology and personality traits. Euclidean distance analysis between the personal attributes in the actual selves in the physical and virtual worlds for the similarities of the 2 selves was performed in the analysis. RESULTS: The current primary findings are the negative correlations between the similarity of the personal attributes in the physical actual self and virtual actual self, and smartphone use time, smartphone addiction as well as anxiety symptomatology respectively (P<.05 to P<.01). CONCLUSIONS: The current findings provide empirical evidence for the importance of maintaining a congruent self across the physical and virtual worlds, regulating smartphone use time, preventing smartphone addiction, and safeguarding mental health.

Fetched live from OpenAlex and de-inverted. Abstracts are not stored in this database: the inverted indexes are 8.6 GB of the frame’s 9.3 GB of text, and the host has 13 GB free.

How this classification was reachedexpand

Full frame machine prediction

Teacher imitation

Not calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.

metaresearch head score (Codex)0.001
metaresearch head score (Gemma)0.002
Version: metacan-v3-hybrid-931329e0061cValidation status: machine_predicted_unvalidated
Candidate categoriesnone
Consensus categoriesnone
DomainCandidate signal: none · Consensus signal: none
Study designCandidate signal: Observational · Consensus signal: Observational
GenreCandidate signal: Empirical · Consensus signal: Empirical
Teacher disagreement score0.003
Threshold uncertainty score0.006

Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)

CategoryCodexGemma
Metaresearch0.0010.002
Meta-epidemiology (narrow)0.0000.000
Meta-epidemiology (broad)0.0000.001
Bibliometrics0.0010.001
Science and technology studies0.0010.000
Scholarly communication0.0010.000
Open science0.0000.001
Research integrity0.0000.001
Insufficient payload (model declined to judge)0.0010.000

Machine scores (provisional)

The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.

Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.

Opus teacher head0.036
GPT teacher head0.384
Teacher spread0.348 · how far apart the two teachers sit on this one work
Validation statusscore_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from it

Classification

machine, unvalidated

Machine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.

The models applied no category: nothing in the taxonomy fit this work.
Study designObservational
Domainnot available
GenreEmpirical

How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".

Quick stats

Citations2
Published2025
Admission routes1
Has abstractyes

Explore more

Same venueJMIR Mental HealthSame topicImpact of Technology on AdolescentsFrench-language works237,207