Smartphone addiction among youth

Author: Genal Jain

Co-Author: Pawan Jumani and Dhruv Churi

R.D. National College, Bandra

Introduction:
Technology has reached the highest level of advancements in today’s world. It has both its merits
as well as demerits. Smartphones, have made our lives easy that we somehow have are totally
relied on even the basic things. Though we may use smartphones for numerous purposes, Kids or
teenagers in general have a different behaviour towards these devices. Imagining how technology
affects the youth on such a large scale, if it can manipulate adults and grown-ups so effectively
that even they sometimes lose their control. Many children spend excessive amounts of time on
mobile phones. It's impossible to blame them, though. Adults do that too, after all. Frequently, ‘a
little bit too much time’ turns into ‘far too much time’, and habit develops, and that habit becomes
an addiction.

Mobile phones have become a staple for youths in the modern society. It questions many
established assumptions. Parents used to think differently about addiction in the past. Cocaine,
heroin, or nicotine were concerns of parents. Addiction has undergone a paradigm shift today.
The problem of smartphone addiction, colloquially known as 'nomophobia' (fear of not having a
mobile phone), is often caused by excessive internet usage or Internet addiction. There's rarely
anything intrinsically compelling about the phones and tablets, but rather the games, apps, and
online worlds they allow us access to.

The younger generation has become so addicted to the electronic devices that they might suffer
from various anxieties from starting a normal social conversation to even be able to talk
professionally. This has raised a lot of concerns not just for the future generations but also by the
Parents or Family. That is why we thought that we might be able to find the root cause of this
issue and try to bring light to this subject, while also working towards better understanding of the
people who are suffering from it.
Literature Review:
The mobile phone is a relatively new technological tool, versatile and accessible, and very
attractive, especially for young people, but whose use involves a risk of abuse and addictive
behaviour. In recent years there has been increasing interest in this problem, especially in view of
the fact that it involves an increasingly younger population. The aim of this paper is to review the
current state of scientific knowledge about cell phone addiction/abuse. To this end, a search was
carried out in international databases, using the descriptors "mobile phone", "cellular telephones",
"addiction" and "abuse", and focusing on prevalence studies, diagnostic tests, associations with
psychological variables and gender differences. There is a conceptual vagueness about the
concepts of abuse and addiction in relation to mobile phones, and wide disparity in the adoption
of diagnostic criteria; moreover, there are numerous instruments for the assessment of these
concepts. As a result, the estimated prevalence ranges from 0-38%, depending on the scale used
and the characteristics of the population studied. Surprisingly, self-attribution of cell phone
addiction exceeds the prevalence estimated in the studies themselves. The personality trait most
consistently associated with addiction is low self-esteem, though extraversion is associated with
more intense use. Women with low self-esteem are the most vulnerable group, and the most
commonly associated psychopathological symptom was depression. In short, while the evidence
suggests a problem in relation to mobile phone use, the vagueness of the cell phone addiction
concept and the poor quality of the studies make it difficult to generalize the results. It is
necessary to define and unify criteria with a view to carrying out quality studies that permit
appropriate comparisons.

Hypothesis:

H1 - There is a significant increase in the Mobile Phone usage among Youth.

H0 - There is no significant increase in Mobile Phone usage among Youth.

Data Analysis:

Methodology:

For this we used both types of Research Methodology:

1. Primary Data Collection Method:
For this we made a questionnaire and circulated it through various groups of people to gather
their opinions on set-specific question which would help us in this Project. We mainly focused
on young generation to help us through the collection of Data. As of this date we have
managed to collect 60+ responses.
The questions were mainly based on how much is their daily phone usage + what do they
prioritize when they use their Mobile Phones.

2. Secondary Data Collection Method:

In this type of Data Collection, we the team read numerous articles/ Research Papers to gather
more and impactful insights on the topic. We read a few articles on Wikipedia and tried to
resemble and represent them in our research papers.

Findings:

Bibliography:

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