Gender Differential for Smart Phone Addiction and its Predictors among Adolescents: Assessing relationship with Self Control via SEM Approach

Abstract

Background: Almost a quarter of young people are so dependent on their smartphones that it has become an addiction. Mobile phone addiction is a sum effect of phubbing, internet addiction, or social media intrusion. Self-controlling behaviour is a necessity to avoid addiction. The study aims to find the gender differentials for the effect of predictors of mobile phone addiction and its effect on self-control via Smart phone addiction through SEM in two CBSE schools of Meerut, contributing a sample size of 400. Methods: Data Collection was done in part (1) Demographic information, Part (2) 5 structured scales: (i) The Phubbing Scale (ii) Adapted Mobile Phone Use Habits scale (iii) The Facebook Intrusion Questionnaire (iv) Internet Addiction Scale and (v) The Brief Self-Control Scale. Results: Male students are more phubbed (53%) than female students (25%), but the use of internet addiction is more in female students (48%) than male (33%). Self-control overall was 31%, more in males (35%) than female students (25%). Conclusion: Male students have a tendency to be more phubbed, and female students are more internet addicted. Self-controlling behaviour was less in females than their counterparts’ male students and so, were more addicted to Smart phone.