An Investigation of Smartphone Addiction and Usage among University Students

Abstract

The young population nowadays extensively uses mobile phones and smartphones. The attractive features that smartphones offer to users have caused a rapid increase in the usage time of these technological devices. This situation has led to the emergence of the smartphone addiction concept. Considered one of the major problems of the 21st century by many researchers, smartphone addiction is an impulsive disorder caused by excessive and uncontrolled use of smartphones. The research aims to analyse university students’ smartphone usage habits and smartphone addiction regarding numerous variables such as gender, daily use time, daily frequency of control, number of social media accounts, and intended use. The sample for the study consists of 366 students. The research data were collected using the Personal Information Form and Smartphone Addiction Scale. The data analysis is done using Kruskal-Wallis and Mann-Whitney-U tests. The results indicate that smartphone addiction levels of university students have a significant difference by gender, daily use time, daily frequency of control, and intended use. However, the number of social media accounts did not differ significantly.