Problematic Smartphone Addiction Leads To Behavioral & Cognitive Self-Control Deficits
Smartphone Addiction Lowers Cognition, Self-Control & Mental Health
The majority of individuals in industrialized nations own cell phones. Nomophobia refers to the anxiety of being without a smartphone and has evolved into a social problem. According to research, people with smartphone addiction tend to report higher levels of loneliness and have difficulties with self-regulation.
In addition, smartphone-dependent individuals are prone to experience side effects when their phone use is curtailed. Rosa Fabio, Alessia Stracuzzi, and Riccardo Lo Faro investigated the association between smartphone addiction and behavioral and cognitive self-control deficiencies.
Fabio and his coworkers selected 111 individuals ranging in age from 18 to 65. 28 percent of participants were college students, while 78 percent were employed. Using the “SocialStatsApp” the phone data of each participant was gathered.
The SAS-SV was utilized to assess the risk and severity of smartphone addiction for each participant. The Psychological General Well-Being Index Short Form, Fear of Missing Out Scale, and Procrastination Scale were also assessed.
The phases of this research were pre-test, experimental, and post-test. During the pre-test phase, Fabio and his colleagues evaluated each participant’s smartphone usage using SocialStatsApp. Participants were told to minimize their smartphone usage to one hour each day for three consecutive days during experimental phase. During the period following the test, participants were permitted to use their smartphones freely for seven consecutive days.
The participants’ mind, concentration, executive control, auditory reaction speed, visual reaction time, ability to regulate motor response, and behavioral inhibition were evaluated the day prior to and after the experimental stage.
The results indicate that participants with higher degrees of smartphone addiction had a higher noncompliance rate. Participants with higher smartphone addiction used their devices for longer in all three phases, despite being encouraged to limit their use.
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In addition, participants with higher degrees of smartphone addiction exhibited poorer memory skills, visual response time, auditory response time, ability to suppress physiological reactions, and behavioral inhibition than those with lower levels of mobile phone addiction.
There were no considerable differences in participant performance on these measures between the pre-test and post-test phases. Participants with higher degrees of smartphone addiction also had lower scores on the Psychological General Well-Being Index and higher scores on the Fear of Missing Out Scale and the Procrastinating Scale.
According to Fabio and his colleagues, their research indicates that smartphone addicts exhibit less self-control. Ineffective self-regulation may have detrimental effects on people’s daily lives, such as cognitive deficits and decreased reaction times. Inasmuch as these subjects exhibited fewer procrastination behaviors and less fear of social exclusion, the researchers assert that persons with lower degrees of smartphone addiction had a higher impression of their general well-being and quality of life.
A limitation of the research is that some of the participants dropped out when they learned they would be required to restrict their smartphone use to one hour per day for three consecutive days. Therefore, data from individuals with likely exceptionally high levels of smartphone users are absent. Fabio and his colleagues suggest that future studies should investigate the withdrawal consequences of smartphone-dependent persons.
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