Abstract
To reduce the spread of COVID-19, Jordan enforced 10 weeks of home quarantine in the spring of 2020. A cross-sectional study was designed to assess this extended quarantine's effect on smartphone addiction levels among undergraduates. A random sample of 6,157 undergraduates completed an online questionnaire (mean age 19.79 ± 1.67 years; males 28.7%). The questionnaire contains different sections to collect socio-demographic, socio-economic, academic, quarantine-related information, and smartphone usage. The smartphone addiction scale-short version was used to assess the degree of addiction during the quarantine. The mean addiction score across the whole sample was 35.66 ± 12.08, while the prevalence of addiction among participants was 62.4% (63.5% in males and 61.9% in females). The majority of the participants (85%) reported that their smartphone usage during the quarantine increased or greatly increased (27.6 and 57.2%, respectively), with some 42% using their smartphones for more than 6 h a day. Nevertheless, three-quarters of the students wished to reduce their smartphone usage. Several demographic and quarantine factors have been assessed, and students' gender, the field of study, parental education, household income in addition to the location of quarantine (urban, rural) and the house specifications (apartment, independent house, with/without a garden) showed statistically significant associations with smartphone addiction during the quarantine. Female students, students studying scientific- and medical-related majors compared to those studying humanity majors, those with higher incomes, those who had been quarantined in an apartment without a garden, and those who lived in urban areas showed significantly higher addiction scores.
Highlights
The novel coronavirus 2019 (COVID-19) infected more than 180 million people in 222 countries and killed around 4 million globally, according to the World Health Organization [1, 2]
Responses to the online questionnaire were submitted by 7,146 undergraduates at the University of Jordan (UJ) during the April and May of 2020
This study focuses on the association between the new lifestyle forced by home quarantine and smartphone usage, which might even reach the addiction level
Summary
The novel coronavirus 2019 (COVID-19) infected more than 180 million people in 222 countries and killed around 4 million globally (as of 07/07/2021), according to the World Health Organization [1, 2] This disease is a severe acute respiratory syndrome caused by betacoronavirus (SARS-CoV-2), which might disrupt the human body’s normal immune response and cause lots of implications [3, 4]. Due to the countrywide closure, schools, universities, and companies moved to online platforms for distance learning and remote working. This new lifestyle, enforced by staying at home and under quarantine, has brought new challenges socially, economically, physiologically, and psychologically [5,6,7,8,9]
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