Smartphone Use and Addiction Among Nursing Students: A Cross-Sectional Study

Abstract

Introduction: Smartphone use has become a common practice among students, including nursing students, during their studies. Though it is beneficial for access to learning materials. there have been some concerns about addiction to its use. This study investigated the use and level of addiction to smartphones among nursing students.
 Methods: The study is a descriptive-cross sectional study of 1338 undergraduate nursing students in Nigeria with a sample of 454. A self-administered questionnaire was used which included a valid and reliable (α=.814) Smartphone Addiction Scale-Short version (SASSV) with 10 items and a modified four-point Likert scale ranging from strongly disagree 1 to strongly agree 4.  A proportionate cut-off point of above 21.3 is considered a likelihood of smartphone addiction (Nikolic et al. 2022). Mann-Whitney U test was used to test for the hypothesis.
 Results: Most of the respondents 424 (94.0%) reported that they used smartphones for educational purposes, with 363 (80.5%) of the respondents having a likelihood of addiction to smartphones. About three-quarters of the respondents indicated that they spent time using their smartphones longer than they had intended’ (75.2%) and that they will not be able to cope without having a smartphone (74.1%). There was no significant difference in the likelihood of smartphone addiction between the male and female respondents(P>0.05).
 Conclusion: There is a high usage of smartphones among the respondents with a high likelihood of smartphone addiction. This may negatively affect the student's academic performance and mental health. It is therefore recommended that an awareness using a local workshop should be organized for the students.