Discipline Yourself Before Life Disciplines You: Deficient Self-Regulation and Mobile Phone Unregulated Use

Abstract

Excessive mobile phone use has gained attention in the media recently, where it has been associated with driving fatalities and productivity decrements as well as social embarrassment. To provide successful interventions, there is a need to understand why some mobile phone owners can't resist the urge to use their devices. Much prior research has investigated excessive use through the perspective of technology addiction. In the current study we digress from that perspective, and investigate deficient self-regulation as a possible lens to explain excessive mobile phone use and its associated negative consequences. Surveys were used for data collection (n=266). A Partial Least Squares analysis of Anxiety, Boredom, Deficient Self-Regulation, Habit and Mobile phone use (MPU) combined to explain Negative Consequences associated with MPU with 62.8% variance explained. The findings provide evidence on the role of deficient self-regulation in excessive MPU and provide useful insights about appropriate interventions.