Abstract
Sustainable education requires the proper usage of technological devices. Among these is the smartphone, which is used by millions of young people around the world in today’s society. The objective of this study was to understand the smartphone usage profile of Spanish and Italian university students. It also aimed to identify possible problematic uses, and the differences in smartphone use (or abuse) between the participating subjects. The study was descriptive and comparative, with the intentional sampling of N = 1412 subjects studying at the education faculties of the University of Alicante (UA) and the Suor Orsola Benincasa University (UNISOB). A previously-validated questionnaire with 27 items was employed during the 2019–20 academic year. The data was analysed using the SPSS 25 programme. Descriptive and inferential analyses were carried out. The results obtained after the analysis of the data indicated that, of the four possible user types—occasional, habitual, at risk, and problematic—more than half of the sample identified themselves as habitual users. It can be concluded that there are significant differences between the universities: the UA students exhibited more problematic use than the UNISOB students. It is therefore necessary to prepare training programmes that are designed to avert problematic behaviours related to smartphone use.
Highlights
The growing development of the mobile telephone has turned the smartphone into one of the technological tools that is used the most by human beings
The universities selected for this study were the University of Alicante (UA), in Spain, and the Suor Orsola Benincasa University of Naples (UNISOB), in Italy
Significant were the opposition they expressed towards feeling anger at having to disconnect the device in certain situations (88%), towards hiding the amount of time they spent using the device from others (89.5%) and, above all, towards dreaming about their devices (96.3%); these items obtained the lowest mean scores on the scale
Summary
The growing development of the mobile telephone has turned the smartphone into one of the technological tools that is used the most by human beings. It has been shown that these new forms can be especially useful in aiding community integration [6], transforming and democratizing society [7], boosting business innovation [8], and even improving health [9]. These factors have all contributed to these devices becoming an essential part of our lives and a decisive element for the configuration of new, sustainable societies [10,11]
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