Abstract
Predictors of problematic smartphone use have been found mainly in studies on elementary and high school students. Few studies have focused on predictors related to social network and messaging apps or smartphone model. Thus, the objective of our study was to identify predictors of problematic smartphone use related to demographic characteristics, loneliness, social app use, and smartphone model among university students. This cross-sectional study involved 257 Brazilian university students who answered a smartphone addiction scale, a questionnaire about smartphone usage patterns, and the Brazilian version of the UCLA-R loneliness scale. Women, iPhone owners, and users of Instagram and Snapchat had significantly higher smartphone addiction scores. We found correlations between scores for the Brazilian version of smartphone addiction scale and the importance attributed to WhatsApp, Facebook, Instagram, and Snapchat, and the Brazilian version of the UCLA-R loneliness scale. Our hierarchical regression model predicted 32.2% of the scores of the Brazilian version of the smartphone addiction scale, with the greatest increase in predictive capability by the step that added smartphone social app importance, followed by the step that added loneliness. Adding the smartphone model produced the smallest increase in predictive capability. The theoretical and practical implications of these results are discussed.
Highlights
Technological progress is one of the hallmarks of the new millennium
We found a positive correlation between problematic smartphone use in Brazilian university students and the importance they attributed to social media as well as between Smartphone Addiction Scale (SAS)-BR scores and loneliness scores
Adding the smartphone model increased the model’s predictive ability only slightly, indicating that the use of an iPhone is not a strong predictor of problematic smartphone use. These results are intriguing because they show that when we evaluate the smartphone model separately, iPhone users present a higher Brazilian version of Smartphone Addiction Scale (SAS-BR) mean, but when the smartphone model is inserted into a model that controls for age, sex, monthly family income, loneliness, and importance of social apps, this variable does not have great predictability for problematic smartphone use, it is still significant
Summary
Technological progress is one of the hallmarks of the new millennium. The use of smartphones has increased substantially over time, in part due to the many apps that these devices can support (Andrew, 2018). Smartphones can be very useful and benefit the lives of many people, they can bring problems such as “smartphone addiction” (Alosaimi, Alyahya, Alshahwan, Al Mahyijari, & Shaik, 2016; Boumosleh & Jaalouk, 2017). Smartphone restriction can Currently, the accuracy of the term “smartphone addiction” is being questioned. Examples of the lacking characteristics include the following: (1) the absence of severe physical consequences—one important characteristic of an addiction— as smartphone users have at most wrist and neck pain; (2) salience—the concept that the activity of addiction becomes the most relevant activity of the addicted—may not be true in smartphone addiction because smartphones mediate the social, professional, and personal lives of the user; (3) lack of longitudinal studies that confirm stability of the addiction as well as relapses, which are important aspects of addiction; and (4) smartphone addiction can be better explained by other conditions, such as an insecure attachment style, reassurance
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