Smartphone Usage and Academic Performance of College Students

Abstract

There are varied views about smartphones weighed benefits and deemed disadvantages to academic performance. The researcher would like to break in thebarrier between this prevalent yet still perplexing matter. This study described therelationship of smartphone usage and academic performance of college students ina faith-based institution. A descriptive correlational design was used to purposivelysampled 75 students. Of the 75, 51% have high grade point average and 47% wereusing smartphone for an average of 5-8 hours per day. Students claimed they needsmartphones in classroom primarily to provide additional resources for researchwork. However, they only use smartphone moderately to support their classroomlearning. This study ascertained that most of the teachers were distracted whenstudents use smartphones in the classroom. Nevertheless, the use of smartphone inthe classroom has neither negative nor positive impact to student’s learning. Thestudy revealed no significant relationship between extent of smartphone use tosupport classroom learning and academic performance, between classroom learningand academic performance and between impact of smartphone use in classroom tolearning and academic performance. However, this study showed a moderate,negative, significant relationship between hours spent in using smartphone per dayand academic performance. This implies that the more time is spent in usingsmartphone, the lower the academic performance. Therefore, there is a need toregulate if not totally prohibit the use of smartphone in the classroom. Nonetheless,students must be encouraged to minimize the total number of hours spent insmartphone use per day.