The aim of this study was to verify the factors influencing university students' smartphone overdependence from a multidimensional perspective based on an ecological model.
This study was a sequential explanatory mixed method study design. Quantitativ...
The aim of this study was to verify the factors influencing university students' smartphone overdependence from a multidimensional perspective based on an ecological model.
This study was a sequential explanatory mixed method study design. Quantitative and qualitative data were collected between October 20, 2020 to May 6, 2021, from students across 13 universities in each of the six regions (Seoul/Gyeonggi, Gangwon, Gyeongsang, Jeolla, Chungcheong, and Jeju). To collect quantitative data, 482 students completed online self-report questionnaires that were made available on the community websites at each university. To obtain qualitative data, focus group interviews were conducted with 18 students who expressed their willingness to participate in the interview after completing their questionnaires at a university, where it was possible to conduct face-to-face interviews in an undisclosed region. For data analysis, the SPSS 25.0 program was used to perform descriptive statistics, chi-square test, independent sample t-test, analysis of variance, and hierarchical multiple regression, and the qualitative data were evaluated through content analysis.
Results indicated that the average level of smartphone overdependence of university students was 37.63 (±8.62), and 77.8% of the students were at high risk user. Having self-awareness of smartphone overdependence (β=.324, p<.001), autonomy (β=-.258, p<.001), average daily smartphone usage time (β=.179, p<.001), being a fourth-year (senior) student (β=.163, p=.010), the motive for smartphone use was to build relationships with others (β=-.150, p=.011), being female (β=-.142, p=.011) and age (β=-.139, p=.023) were the intrapersonal factors influencing smartphone overdependence in university students. And friends support (β=.134, p=.019) was the interpersonal factors influencing smartphone overdependence. The explanatory power of such variables was 34.9%. In terms of the influencing factors according to gender, the factors for male students were the use of 5G (β=.148, p=.016), studying purposes (β=-.188, p=.003), and information search (β=-.126, p=.045), and the explanatory power of these variables was 34.4%. In contrast, female students showed friends support (β=.198, p<.001) and SNS (social network service) use (β=.112, p=.027) as the influencing factors, and the explanatory power of these variables was 29.5%.
Through the qualitative analysis, 13 categories and 23 subcategories were extracted according to the questions from the three areas of ‘motives for smartphone use,’ ‘awareness of smartphone overuse cues,’ and ‘factors affecting increased use of smartphones.’
In particular, ‘the changes of environment’ in the institutional and community factors identified through qualitative analysis indicated that decreased in-community social networks and the imposed restrictions in daily lives due to COVID-19 triggered an increase in the use of smartphones among university students.
These results suggest that personal traits as well as interpersonal relationships and regional characteristics, which are the external environments surrounding university students, also exerted a crucial influence on smartphone overdependence among university students. Therefore, there is a need to develop differentiated intervention strategies, which takes into account the characteristics of the environment to which a student belongs, to prevent and manage students' excessive use of smartphones. This study applied an ecological model for the multidimensional approach to investigate the environment to which an individual belongs by including variables associated with the external community environment factors, which were rarely considered in previous studies. Furthermore, this study is significant as it used a mixed method study to comprehensively present the factors influencing university students' overdependence on smartphones.
Keywords: Ecological model, smartphone overdependence, self-determination, university students