The Relationships between Cell Phone Use and Sedentary Behavior in Samples of Japanese and American College Students

Abstract

Previous work from our research group has indicated a significant, positive relationship between cellular telephone (cell phone) use and sitting or sedentary behavior in college students. However, this work has been limited to only a single, large, public university in the Midwestern United States. Therefore, it remains unknown if this relationship would be present in groups of college students from different geographic regions and/or cultural backgrounds. PURPOSE: To compare the relationship between daily cell phone use and sedentary behavior in samples of college students from Japan and the United States. METHODS: A sample of college students (N = 808, 20.2 ± 1.8 years old) from either a university in Japan (n = 534, 19.8 ± 1.1 years old) or the United States (n = 274, 21.71± 2.4 years old) completed validated surveys assessing age, daily cell phone use (min) and daily total sedentary behavior (min). Surveys were administered in English for American students and Japanese for students from Japan. RESULTS: Independent samples t-tests revealed that Japanese students reported greater daily sitting (420 ± 264 min/day) and less daily cell phone use (215 ± 125 min/day) than American students (360 ± 198 min/day sitting, 274 ± 150 min/day cell phone use). Because of these differences, Pearson’s correlation analyses assessing the relationship between cell phone use and sedentary behavior were performed for Japanese and American students separately. There were significant, positive relationships between cell phone use and sedentary behavior in both Japanese (r = 0.132, p = 0.002) and American (r = 0.166, p = 0.006) college students. CONCLUSION: While there were differences in sedentary behavior and cell phone use in Japanese versus American college students, the relationships between these variables was positive and significant regardless of group. This finding supports previous data indicating that elevated cell phone use is predictive of greater daily sitting in college students. Furthermore, present results indicate that this relationship extends beyond American college students.