Exploring the relationship between Secondary School Students’ Smartphone Addiction, Cognitive Absorption, and Cyber loafing activities

Abstract

Students' problematic internet behaviour is often mentioned concept in the related literature. Even though the related literature concentrated on students’ problematic internet behaviour from various perspectives among different sampling groups, most of the studies focused on adults than younger groups. Therefore, the current study focused on exploring the secondary school students’ cyberloafing activity, cognitive absorption, and smartphone addiction levels according to the demographic characteristics and determining the relationship between smartphone addiction, cognitive absorption, and cyberloafing behaviours. Data were collected from a total of 808 students enrolled in secondary school in the 2020-2021 academic year. Findings showed that secondary school students’ cyberloafing activity levels did not significantly differ in terms of gender, school type, and grade level while they differed in terms of smartphone use time. Furthermore, adolescents’ cognitive absorption levels significantly differed in terms of gender, school type, grade level, and daily smartphone use. Students’ smartphone addiction levels significantly differed between genders and daily smartphone use time while they did not differ in terms of school type and grade level. It was found that there were positive correlations between cognitive absorption and cyberloafing activity level; cognitive absorption and smartphone addiction level; and cyberloafing and smartphone addiction levels. These results reveal the current situation among secondary school students while examining the levels of smartphone addiction, cyberloafing, and cognitive absorption and their relations.