The purpose of this study is to find the factors affecting the overuse of mobile phone among teenagers by analyzing the differences between the young people’s states of using mobile phones and by investigating the use of them between the group of mo...
The purpose of this study is to find the factors affecting the overuse of mobile phone among teenagers by analyzing the differences between the young people’s states of using mobile phones and by investigating the use of them between the group of mobile phone’s overuse and the group of general use. For this study, we targeted on the teenagers: students who are studying at middle or high schools in Daejeon. The number of targeted teenagers are 379, and they were employed for the study.
As the methods, the study was conducted through the cross analysis, t-verification, and hierarchal session analysis, and the results from the study are as follow.
First of all, the tendency of over-use mobile phone amongthe subject of this study was average 42.02 points, which indicate that the high rate of mobile phone use compared with indexes that the upper class(25%) of mobile phone users are only 59.25 points and the lower class(25%) of mobile phone users are average 26.63 points.
Second, analyzing the status of group of mobile phone over-use, the age of mobile phone use tends to decrease, and there was a tendency that many young people utilize the mobile phone games, access to the wireless Internet, watching the TV programs.
Third, the group of over-use mobile phone, in an aspect of population social affairs, showed that their achievement in academic affairs are relatively lower than those of non-overuse mobile phone group. Also, in an aspect of individual factors, the level of self-esteem was low, but level of depression and impulsiveness are high. In an aspect of family, the communication between children and parents, and the fostering attitudes of parents were negative, but there were no significant differences in the area of supports of friends and teachers.
Fourth, there were many factorsaffecting the over-use of mobile phone: 1) the most crucial factor was the individual one, accounting for 25.6%; 2) factors related to mobile phone was 11.3%; 3) factors related to the family was 1.3%. As far as the individual factors are concerned there were depression and impulsiveness. As for mobile phone related factors, they were the amount of numbers of mobile phone text message a day and a monthly used rate. In a word, many factors - such as the high level of depression and impulsiveness and average using rate of text message, and the monthly used rate of mobile phone- may indicate the over-use of mobile phone.
From the founding of the study, I would like to make several suggestions. First, it is necessary to designa program in order to prevent the over-use of mobile phone by considering various factors such as individual, family-related, social, and mobile phone related ones. On top of this, a program for decreasing depression and impulsiveness should be made in order to increase the mental health. Second, various counseling programs should be introduced in school in order to prevent the overuse of mobile phone. For this, it is necessary to educate and foster teachers or social welfare desiners.
Third, it is most needed to develop the standardized index which can measure the level of overuse of mobile phone with validity.
Fourth, there could be more factors affecting the overuse of mobile phone, so it is necessary to add more variables in future studies.