Article Critique

Smartphones has captured convenience and entertainment, making it part of our daily lives

(Parasuraman, Thamby, Yee, Chuon & Ren, 2017). The Philippines gained its title as “the fastest-growing

smartphone market in Southeast Asia” (Abadilla, 2016) with adolescents making up the majority of the

smartphone-owners in the country (Lucas, 2014). In the article “The role of nomophobia and smartphone

addiction in the lifestyle profiles of Junior and Senior high school students in the Philippines,” Buctot,

Kim, Kim (2020) analyzed the correlation of NMP (nomophobia) and smartphone addiction (SA) to

adolescent lifestyle profiles (ALPs), even examining further into gender and grade (junior vs. senior high

school) among the participants. Although the article produced results where SA and Nomophobia were

significant to ALP, there are limitations on the generalizability of the results.

The authors used a sample of 1447 participants, 40.1% boys and 59.9% girls, with approximately

60% junior high school students and 41% senior high school students. Surveys used were The

Nomophobia Questionnaire, Smartphone Addiction Scale-Short Version, and Adolescent Lifestyle

Profile-Revised 2 to measure each individual’s level of nomophobia, smartphone addiction, and lifestyle

profiles, accordingly. Buctot, Kim and Kim (2020) found that SA (smartphone addiction) is prevalent to

62.6% of the participants and 12.4%, 63.2%, 23.8%, had mild, moderate, and severe cases of

nomophobia, accordingly. In regards to the adolescent lifestyle profile, gender and grade of the

participants, the significance of NMP and SA were scattered and varied.

The research article did aim and achieve its goal of finding the prevalence of NMP and SA

among junior and senior high school students but what limits this is that there can be no general

explanation between the exposure to smartphones and the outcome of this to the adolescent’s lifestyle.

The authors also failed to consider the margin of errors. Differences in scores between genders, male and

female, and grade levels, junior and senior high school, were not so much of a gap but only little so if

applied the margin of errors, results in differences could be equal instead.

 Several studies, specifically by Kim, Kim, and Jee (2015) found that those with smartphone

addiction were more physically inactive and developed negative health consequences while Buctot, Kim,

and Kim found that SA is insignificant to the ALP subdomains: health responsibility, physical activity,

nutrition, stress management, and spiritual health. NMP had the same effect on the same subdomains

except spiritual health. These research findings are inconsistent to the earlier studies conducted which

attributed SA and NMP to health responsibility.

Indeed, this is a cross-sectional study with limits to examining retrospectively the relationships,

however the prevalence of NMP and SA were quite difficult to generalize given the fact that there are

such behaviors and social contexts that need to be considered. One such consideration is although SA and

NMP can be spiritually-disorienting, some adolescents stay spiritually focused through their smartphones

(Rhodes, 2016). This concurs with the findings of the research yet the opposite for earlier studies. Buctot,

Kim, and Kim (2020) implies that smartphone addiction and nomophobia shares a predictive relationship

with ALPs yet their findings fail to provide evidence. There should have been more review on to why the

adolescents in the Philippines differ from those in other countries, such as cultural or behavioral context.

The limitation of the study was the generalizability of the results which could only come up with the

suggestion of intervention and guidance of adults for the adolescents’ behavior towards smartphones.

Another cause for this is the lack of margin error. The differences between the demographic profiles

towards ALPs were not extraordinary.

 References

Abadilla, E. (2016, November 23). Smartphone users up 25% to 32.5 M. Manila Bulletin.

https://business.mb.com.ph/2016/11/24/smartphone-users-up-25-to-32-5-m/

Buctot, D. B., Kim, N., & Kim, S. (n.d.). The role of nomophobia and smartphone addiction in

the lifestyle profiles of junior and senior high school students in the Philippines. ScienceDirect.com |

Science, health and medical journals, full text articles and books.

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2590291120300243?via%3Dihub

Kim, S., Kim, J., & Jee, Y. (2015, September 1). Relationship between smartphone addiction and

physical activity in Chinese international students in Korea. AKJournals.

https://akjournals.com/view/journals/2006/4/3/article-p200.xml

Lucas, D. L. (2014, December 12). Using smartphones among Filipinos’ top daily activities.

INQUIRER.net. https://business.inquirer.net/183389/using-smartphones-among-filipinos-top-daily-

activities

Parasuraman, S., Thamby, S., Yee, Y., Chuon, C., & Ren, L. (2017, October 17). (PDF)

Smartphone usage and increased risk of mobile phone addiction: A concurrent study. ResearchGate.

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/321080845_Smartphone_usage_and_increased_risk_of_mobile

_phone_addiction_A_concurrent_study

Rhodes, T. M. (2016). The wired soul: Finding spiritual balance in a Hyperconnected age.

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