Smartphone Addiction and Bonding Social Capital Among University Students of Youth Community in Bangladesh

Abstract

The main objective of this paper was to examine the effects of smartphone addiction on bonding social capital among the university students in Bangladesh, for which measurement of smartphone addiction has been a correlated precondition of the study. In this connection, the main argument of this paper is that the accessibility of online-based smartphone apps alarmingly increases the compulsive use of smartphone mainly among the youth community in Bangladesh. The study employed a social survey method where data were collected through a face-to-face interview with a structured questionnaire. The study used a stratified random sampling with a sample size of 384 in the public and private university students in Bangladesh. Results show that 28 percent of the university students are addicted to the smartphone which has greater impacts on their primordial social relation as well as bonding social capital. The statistical findings also reveal that smartphone addiction weakens attachment to their family, close friends, and relatives despite having more communicational and interactional benefits from them. Specifically, the addictive use of smartphone reduces emotional sharing, interior intimacy, and responsibility toward the nearest one, but these adverse effects are highly predicted by the adaptive dysfunctions as social symptoms and by the psychological state of feeling panic and anxious without a smartphone. The study findings would be the important guideline for the policymakers, education and development practitioners, community development and youth welfare workers, social scientists, and human rights workers.