Smartphone addiction and Smartphone use - Digital literacy among the students of Allied Health Sciences in Indore
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.69980/ajpr.v28i1.293Keywords:
Smartphone addiction, SAS-SV, Smartphone use, Digital literacy.Abstract
Background: Smartphone addiction is a lack of control of smartphone use with negative consequences and is considered a technological or behavioural addiction. Smartphone addiction has been positively correlated with mental distress, such as depression, anxiety, loneliness, stress and boredom in empirical studies and linked to poor sleep quality, impaired learning and acquisition and premature cognitive decline. Adverse physical effects have also been reported, such as dry eye, musculoskeletal pain, hypertension, body dysfunction and weakened immunity. These conditions are associated with a decrease in psychological well-being and reduced life satisfaction. Digital literacy combines both technical and cognitive abilities; it consists of using information and communication technologies to create, evaluate and share information. Smartphone is essential tool in today’s life as well it has some hazardous effects so it is essential to know about the digital literacy of students to guide them for proper use of smartphone.
Method: The students studying in various allied health science courses were assessed for their smartphone addiction using Smartphone Addiction Scale – Short Version (SAS-SV) after their consent. The demographic data of 335 smartphone addicted participants was collected and they were assessed for their mobile usage type and duration. Data was entered in to Microsoft excel sheet and analysed using JAMOVI software to describe the participants’ demographic features and type of their mobile use
Results: Among 335 smartphone addicted participants 267 participants were female and 68 participants were male. The mean age for all participants was 22.3 years, 99 participants were aged less than 20 years, 199 participants aged 21-25 years and 37 participants aged more than 25 years. The mean height for all participants was 159.99 cm, the mean body weight for all the participants was 53.44kg and mean BMI for all participants was 20.93. The total mean time of smartphone usage in smartphone addicted students is 431.75 minutes and they use smartphone for 133.42 min for educational activities, 95.73 min for entertainment activities, 20.85 min for gaming activities, 96.82 min for social media activities, 30.58 min for aimless surfing and 54.34 min for music listening. Total mobile use per day did not significantly differ between genders (p = 0.825), patterns of use varied. Females spent significantly more time on educational activities (141.95 ± 104.08 min) than males (99.93 ± 62.45 min, p = 0.002). Conversely, males spent significantly more time on gaming (36.03 ± 54.14 min) than females (16.99 ± 32.83 min), with a highly significant p-value of 0.001. No statistically significant gender differences were observed in entertainment, social media, aimless surfing, or music listening. Total daily usage time increased slightly with age but was not statistically significant (p = 0.240). Older participants (>25 years) investing more time (153.11 ± 135.24 min) than younger participants (<20 years: 117.32 ± 82.16 min) for educational activities, although this difference also lacked statistical significance (p = 0.222). No significant differences were observed across age groups for entertainment, gaming, social media, aimless surfing, or music listening.
Conclusions: Smartphone addicted students spend more time on educational activities with decreasing order of smartphone usage in social media activities, entertainment activities, listening to music, aimless surfing and least time on gaming activities. The difference in total time spent for smartphone usage by males and females is statistically not significant but the pattern of smartphone use varies in both the gender. The decreasing pattern of smartphone usage in male is entertainment activities, social media activities, educational activities, listening to music, gaming activities and aimless surfing and in female the pattern is educational activities, social media activities, entertainment activities, listening to music, aimless surfing and gaming activities. It has been found that the students are aware about digital literacy; they spend more time on educational activities than others. Students can be make aware about the usage of smartphone and their interest and enthusiasm for smartphone usage can be diverted towards more educational activities thus their digital literacy regarding the smartphone usage can be enhanced.
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