Elsevier

Computers & Education

Volume 123, August 2018, Pages 164-173
Computers & Education

Relationship among smartphone usage, addiction, academic performance and the moderating role of gender: A study of higher education students in India

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.compedu.2018.05.007Get rights and content

Highlights

  • Smartphone addiction is on a rise in India, however there are very few studies on the same.

  • Smartphone usage was found to be high in case of female students than the male ones.

  • Students involved in a relationship were found to make higher usage of smartphones than those who were single.

  • Both male and female students got addicted to smartphones, thus affecting their academic performance.

  • Gender moderated the relationship between addiction and relationship status.

Abstract

Smartphones have penetrated into people's lives at a faster pace in the recent times in India. They are being used for several purposes besides talking and messaging such as live chatting, searching for information, mobile banking and entertainment, etc. The discussions over the smartphone has taken over personal discussions and one to one interactions among people. The usage has become so high that it has turned into addiction in many cases. In this study smartphones's addiction on students academic performance has been measured and the effect of gender and relationship status on smartphone usage and addiction has also been checked. Smartphone usage has been measured with the help of amount of time spent on the phone and monthly bill. A questionnaire was constructed and administered to 429 higher education students in India to check addiction, effect on performance and smartphone usage, along with the main utilities of a smartphone and the demographic profile of the respondents. Results show that the usage is more in the case of females than male students. However the effect on performance is found to be severe in the case of the male students. Apart from behavioural changes female students were found to have hardly any effect of Smartphone addiction on them, unlike the male students who were found to neglect work, feel anxious and lose control of themselves.

Introduction

Smartphone's have permeated into the lives of Indians at a faster pace in the recent years. India has become the second biggest market surpassing the United States of America(U.S) with more than 220 million users in terms of active users (Pathak, 2015). Irrespective of age, income, gender and place of living, the smartphone has become an important part of an Indian's life. In many cases they are being used as an alternative for computers and in some cases radio and television too (news watching and sports highlights etc.). Some people even prefer smartphone over laptop and personal computers for entertainment, search information, chatting, shopping, online banking, agenda tracking, preparing homework and learning. Smartphone offer people a unique experience and enable them to be online anytime and anywhere (Alan & Eyuboglu, 2012). But there also have been lot of accusations against smartphone, such as student's wasting time and missing studies, avoiding exercises, being unmindful on roads while walking and driving, watching adult contents etc. The later part of the accusations have been linked with people of various age groups and especially the students in the secondary education group who are mostly adolescents. There are accusations that there is a shift from smartphone usage towards smartphone addiction especially among the youth. In fact the communication over the devices has increased to such an extent that it has made an impact on people's personal lives. Meeting personally with people and interacting has been taken over by the virtual mode severely.

One can understand the vulnerability of the Indian Smartphone users from the fact that over fifty percent of Smartphone users check their devices within 5 min of waking up and Instant messaging (IM) apps and social networks are the first things consumers check on their Smartphone in the morning (Deloitte, 2015). In such a case it becomes necessary to study the impact of Smartphone on the young children and the youth which not only comprise the largest part of the Indian population (almost 40%) but is a highly vulnerable section too.

The concept of addiction is commonly associated with drugs. It is perhaps unsurprising that most official definitions concentrate on drug ingestion. Despite such definitions, there is now a growing movement that views a number of other behaviours as potentially addictive. These include activities as diverse as gambling, overeating, sex, exercise and computer game playing etc. Such diversity has led to new all-encompassing definitions of what constitutes addictive behaviour (Griffiths, 1998). Coventry and Brown (1993) have argued that concept of addiction must not be limited to the ingestion of substances and classified the activity as addiction, if it leads to characteristics such as 1)Salience: Domination of a person's life by the activity 2)Euphoria: A ‘buzz’ or a ‘high’ is derived from the activity 3)Tolerance: The activity has to be undertaken to a progressively greater extent to achieve the same ‘buzz’ 4)Withdrawal Symptoms: Cessation of the activity leads to the occurrence of unpleasant emotions or physical effects 5)Conflict: The activity leads to conflict with others or self-conflict 6)Relapse and Reinstatement: Resumption of the activity with the same vigour subsequent to attempts to abstain, negative life consequences, and negligence of job, educational or career opportunities (Alavi et al., 2012; Griffiths, 1996).

In some studies Smartphone addiction has been compared with smoking as the latter one offers adult style to adolescents, individuality, sociability, rebellion, peer group bonding and adult aspiration (Charlton & Bates, 2000). In fact according to them both the industries promote their products through self-image and identity. Young smokers as well as mobile phone addicts are risk takers, rule breakers and non-conformist in nature (Cassidy, 2006).

The primary focus of this research study is to study the consequences of Smartphone addiction on the academic performance of higher education school/University students in India. As a part of this study an attempt has been made to study the effect of gender and relationship status on the Smartphone usage. Finally the moderating effect of gender has been studied on the academic performance. The paper can be divided into five major sections starting with the 1)introduction of the study, 2) literature review, 3) survey design methodology and development, 4) data collection and analysis, 5) discussion of the findings, conclusion, limitations and scope for future research.

Section snippets

Literature review & hypothesis development

The term addiction has been mostly associated with drugs, alcohol, gambling etc. Technology addiction has been recognized since the mid-1990s as a new kind of social problem as the media started paying increasing attention to the idea of computer or internet addiction (Shaw & Black, 2008). Accessed by computer, the Internet provides users with the opportunity to escape from one state of consciousness and visit different worlds of information with all the euphoric mind-bending properties

Methodology

The study was carried out in three phases. In the first phase, to get a better understanding of smartphone addiction, initially we developed measures to evaluate the effect of smartphone addiction. The instrument for measurement was a self-report questionnaire. The second phase was data collection and the last phase was data editing, coding and analysis. The responses were analysed with the help of the statistical software SPSS-21.

Sample characteristic

The respondents were college going youth, mostly female (64.8%) in the age group of 16–23. The rest were males(35.2%). The minimum and maximum age being 16 and 29, average being 19.5 years. Only 7 respondents were above the age of 23. Out of all the respondents 296 were single (68.99%) i.e., they were not involved in any kind of relationship and 133(31.01%) were either committed or involved in some kind of relationship. Some of the major uses of smartphone was messaging(74%), checking social

Discussion

The penetration of smartphones in India is on a constant rise. It is more so among the young ones. This was evident from the fact that more than 95% of the respondents were holding a smartphone. An initial analysis of the sample characteristics shows that the time spent on the phone and the average bill per month was high in case of female (5.2 h, $7.1) than male (3.9 h, $6.2). This led to the conclusion that female students spend more time with their smartphones than the male ones. These

Conclusion, limitations & scope of future research

India has gone through a drastic technological advancement in the last decade. The use of internet has grown rapidly and alongwith it the devices for accessing internet has also grown from desktops and laptops to smartphones. Being, the 2nd largest market of smartphones, its pricing and features had made it attractive to a large section of the Indian society. There have been many positives of smartphone such as instant messaging, live chats, reminder, make notes, play games, mobile banking,

Dr. Jogendra Kumar Nayak, has earned his PhD degree in Industrial Marketing from the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Kharagpur, India. He is an Assistant Professor in Marketing in the Department of Management Studies, Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Roorkee, India. He has publications in most of the publishing houses such as Elsevier, Emerald, Sage and Taylor and Francis in high impact journals. He is also a reviewer to a large number of reputed journals. His major research areas are

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    Dr. Jogendra Kumar Nayak, has earned his PhD degree in Industrial Marketing from the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Kharagpur, India. He is an Assistant Professor in Marketing in the Department of Management Studies, Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Roorkee, India. He has publications in most of the publishing houses such as Elsevier, Emerald, Sage and Taylor and Francis in high impact journals. He is also a reviewer to a large number of reputed journals. His major research areas are in Industrial Marketing and Consumer Behaviour.

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