A study on the impacts of Smartphone addiction

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1 INTRODUCTION
Communication has played an important role in our
society since a long time ago. Its tools and equip-
ment have been developed over times which en-
hance us to communicate with others easier and fast-
er. Recently, a Smartphone has become the most
important communication tool in people’ daily lives
(Suparp 2006).
Smartphone has been developed since the emerg-
ing of the first mobile phone dating back to 1983.
During 1993-2003, digital technology was applied to
Smartphone technology creating various features.
When the Smartphone could connect to the internet,
it could provide various features such as camera,
games, and a number of applications. Most im-
portantly, the price of the Smartphone has been de-
clining dramatically. These lead to the popularity of
the Smartphone in recent days (Palachaipiromsil
2011). People can use Smartphone to communicate
online with friends so they can conquer live their
lives more conveniently not just only for communi-
cation, but also for their works, and personal enter-
tainment (Boonuyang et al. 2015).
In Thailand, the number of Smartphone users had
increased by 81.4% during 2012-2016. It is reported
that there were 51 million Smartphone users in Thai-
land according to the report of the National Statisti-
cal Office (2016). However, a Smartphone also
causes negative impacts on people lives since many
of them pay much attention to playing games, chat-
ting with friends, surfing the internet, listening to
music, and watching movies. They keep doing these
activities day by day and finally addict to using a
Smartphone (Jitsukpluem 2014).
Smartphone addiction leads to various conse-
quences. It could have an impact on people mood
and temper. Previous studies (Ravichandran 2009,
Hyun-Seok et al. 2012, Sarwar 2013, Petchkhum
2014, Arbi et al. 2014, Mok et al. 2014, Park, & Lee
2014, Park & Park 2014, Park et al. 2014, De-
rakhshani & Shirazi 2015, Park et al. 2015,
Thongjuephong 2016) indicated that Smartphone
addiction had a positive impact on mood disorder.
Hence, we proposed the hypothesis as follows:
H1: Smartphone addiction has a positive impact
on mood disorder
Arbi et al. (2014) stated that Smartphone addic-
tion resulted in negative impact on exercising, eat-
ing, and sleeping as well as caused health problems.
In addition, Smartphone addiction could lead to
mental disorder (Jones 2014, Mok et al. 2014). Vari-
ous studies also founded the negative impacts of
Smartphone on health of addicted people (Ravichan-
A study on the impacts of Smartphone addiction
Napassphol Sinsomsack & Waiphot Kulachai
Burapha University, Chonburi, Thailand
ABSTRACT: The objective of this study was to examine Smartphone addiction among high school students
and its impacts. The samples of the study were 341 high school students in the Eastern region of Thailand de-
rived from stratified random sampling. The questionnaire was used to collect the data. The data were then an-
alyzed using correlation statistics. The results indicated that Smartphone addiction had a positive impact on
mood disorders. It also caused a negative impact on health, family relationship, social relationship, and aca-
demic performance of the high school students.
Keywords: Smartphone addiction, disorders.
248
Copyright © 2018, the Authors. Published by Atlantis Press.
This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/).
Advances in Social Science, Education and Humanities Research (ASSEHR), volume 186
15th International Symposium on Management (INSYMA 2018)

dran 2009, Sawar 2013, Petchkhum 2014, Park &
Park 2014, Park et al. 2014, Abu-Shanab & Haddad
2015, Park et al. 2015, Thongjuephong 2016).
Hence, the second hypothesis was proposed as fol-
lows:
H2: Smartphone addiction has a negative impact
on health
Besides negative impacts as discussed in the pre-
vious section, Smartphone addiction also has nega-
tive consequences on a family relationship of young
people who addict to the Smartphone. The study by
Ravichandran (2009) reported that Smartphone ad-
diction led to a poor relationship among family
members. This was in line with other previous stud-
ies (Baron 2010, Sarwar 2013, Petchkhum 2014,
Jones 2014, Park et al. 2014, Abu-Shanab & Haddad
2015, Derakhsha & Shirazi 2015). The studies by
Jeong & Lee (2015) provided supportive findings.
Hence, the third hypothesis was proposed as follows:
H3: Smartphone addiction has a negative impact
on family relationship
Some researchers examined the impact of
Smartphone addiction on academic performance of
young people, especially high school students
(Hyun-Seok et al. 2012, Sarwar 2013, Mok et al.
2014, Park & Park 2014, Park et al. 2014, Abu-
Shanab & Haddad 2015, Al-Barashdi et al. 2015,
Jeong & Lee 2015 and Lee & Cho 2015). Most of
them found a negative impact of Smartphone addic-
tion on students’ academic performance. Hence, the
fourth hypothesis was proposed as follows:
H4: Smartphone addiction has a negative impact
on students’ academic performance
The research conducted by Baron (2010) provid-
ed interesting finding. The more likely the people
addict to a Smartphone, the most likely they will ex-
perience poor social relationship. This result was
supported by later studies (Hyun-Seok et al. 2012,
Petchkhum 2014, Park & Lee 2014, Derakhshani &
Shirazi 2015, Jeong & Lee 2015, Thongjuephong
2016). Hence, the fifth hypothesis was proposed as
follows:
H5: Smartphone addiction has a negative impact
on social relationship
2 METHODOLOGY
2.1 Participants
The samples of the study were 341 high school stu-
dents in the Eastern region of Thailand derived from
stratified random sampling. Most of them were fe-
male accounting for 62.2%. Approximately 44.9%
were Grade 10 students. Most of them lived with
their families (85%). About 48% of the respondents
reported having their first Smartphone when they
were in the secondary school.
2.2 Measures
For all measures in the study, except demographic
questions, respondents indicated their level of
agreement with the items using a 5-point’s Likert re-
sponse scale anchored by (1) strongly disagree and
(5) strongly agree. Each measure is illustrated as the
followings;
Smartphone addiction measure consisted of 15
items developed by the authors. The measurement
provided an alpha reliability of .86. The example
items included “I always check message from
friends on my Smartphone”, “I prefer using my
Smartphone rather than doing other activities”, and
“I always use my Smartphone before going to bed.”
Mood disorder was measured using a 4-item
questionnaire developed by the authors. The meas-
urement provided an alpha reliability of .86. The ex-
ample items included “I always upset when I am
prohibited using Smartphone” and “Whenever my
Smartphone runs out of battery, I will be very anx-
ious.”
Health problem was measured by a 3-item ques-
tionnaire developed by the authors. The measure-
ment provided an alpha reliability of .79. The exam-
ple items included “I always have finger-pain after
continuously using my Smartphone for hours”, “I
have less time for sleeping”, and “I usually have a
neck and shoulder pain after continuously using my
Smartphone for hours.”
Family relationship measure consisted of 5 items
developed by the authors. The measurement provid-
ed an alpha reliability of .85. The example items in-
cluded “After back from school, I always use my
Smartphone rather than do activities with my family
members”, “My family members have less commu-
nication with each other since they have their own
Smartphone”, and “After getting up in the morning, I
always find my Smartphone rather than communi-
cating with other family members.”
Academic performance measure consisted of 4
items developed by the authors. The measurement
provided an alpha reliability of .87. The example
items included “I use my Smartphone while study-
ing”, “I pay more attention to my Smartphone rather
than prepare for the coming exam”, and “I do not
understand what my teacher says in the class.”
Social relationship measure consisted of 5 items
developed by the authors. The measurement provid-
ed an alpha reliability of .82. The example items in-
cluded “I always use Smartphone even in the public
places”, “I prefer using my Smartphone rather than
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Advances in Social Science, Education and Humanities Research (ASSEHR), volume 186

doing activities with friends”, and “I always use my
Smartphone while traveling by public transportation.”
2.3 Analysis
Descriptive statistics such as mean, frequency, per-
centage, and standard deviation were employed to
analyze and explain some attributes of the variables.
In addition, correlation statistics was employed for
hypothesis testing
3 RESULTS
The correlation analysis in this study showed wheth-
er and how strongly pairs of variables are related.
The variables in this analysis consisted of smartphone
addiction (SA), mood disorder (MD), health problem
(HP), family relation (FR), academic performance
(AP), and social relation (SR). Pearson’s r correla-
tion was employed to measure the degree of the rela-
tionship between linearly related variables. The re-
sults of the study are illustrated in Table 1.
Table 1. Paerson’s r correlation.
______________________________________________
SA MD HP FR AP SR
______________________________________________
SA -
MD 0.67** -
HP 0.48** 0.49** -
FR 0.62** 0.60** 0.55** -
AP 0.57** 0.56** 0.46** 0.60** -
SR 0.63** 0.57** 0.52** 0.69** 0.64**
_____________________________________________
** p < 0.01.
According to Table 1, Smartphone addiction has the
highest relationship with mood disorder (r=.667) fol-
lowed by social relationship (r=.625), family rela-
tionship (r=.620), academic performance (r=.570),
and health problem (r=.481) respectively. These in-
dicate that Smartphone addiction has a high level of
relationship with mood disorder, social relationship,
and family relationship. However, it has a moderate
relationship with academic performance and health
problem. Table 2 shows the result of hypothesis test-
ing.
Table 2. Hypothesis testing.
__________________________________________________
Hypothesis Result
__________________________________________________
H1: smartphone addiction has a positive impact Accepted
on mood disorder
H2: smartphone addiction has a negative impact Accepted
on health
H3: smartphone addiction has a negative impact Accepted
on family relationship
H4: smartphone addiction has a negative impact Accepted
on students’ academic performance
H5: smartphone addiction has a negative impact Accepted
on social relationship
__________________________________________________
4 DISCUSSION
The finding indicates a strong positive relationship
between Smartphone addiction and mood disorder.
This means that the more likely the students addict
to a Smartphone, the most likely they will have a
high level of mood disorder. This finding supports
and in line with previous studies (Ravichandran
2009, Hyun-Seok et al. 2012, Sarwar 2013, Pet-
chkhum 2014, Arbi et al. 2014, Mok et al. 2014,
Park & Lee 2014, Park & Park 2014, Park et al.
2014, Derakhshani & Shirazi 2015, Park et al. 2015,
Thongjuephong 2016). Addiction to Smartphone al-
so leads to emotional fluctuation which finally re-
sults in depression.
As discussed in the previous section, Smartphone
addiction could lead to a poor social relationship
(Hyun-Seok et al. 2012, Petchkhum 2014, Park &
Lee 2014, Derakhshani & Shirazi 2015, Jeong & Lee
2015, Thongjuephong 2016). The finding of our
study is in line with the previous researches on these
issues. Students who are addicted to the Smartphone
have poor social interaction since they might have
no/little attachment to their families and schools and
they are not involved in any activities. Hence, they
spend most of their time with the Smartphone.
We found that Smartphone addiction affected the
relationship in the family. Students who were ad-
dicted to Smartphone reported that they had a poor
relationship with their families. They seldom com-
municate with other family members since they al-
ways pay attention to their Smartphone rather than
place importance on doing activities with other
members. The finding supports the results of previ-
ous studies (Baron 2010, Sarwar 2013, Petchkhum
2014, Jones 2014, Park et al. 2014, Abu-Shanab &
Haddad 2015, Derakhsha & Shirazi 2015, Jeong &
Lee 2015).
The result of this study also pointed out that
Smartphone addiction had negative consequences on
students’ academic performance. Many of them use
their Smartphone while studying. They always pay
less attention to the teachers. Hence, they cannot un-
derstand the lessons given by their teachers. This
support the finding of previous studies (Hyun-Seok
et al. 2012, Sarwar 2013, Mok et al. 2014, Park &
Park 2014, Park et al. 2014, Abu-Shanab & Haddad
2015, Al-Barashdi et al. 2015, Jeong & Lee 2015,
Lee & Cho 2015 and Sundari 2015).
Our research finding also supported that
Smartphone addiction had negative impacts on stu-
dents' health. Some of them experienced neck and
finger pain since they had used their Smartphone
playing games, chatting, and surfing internet for
long hours. The finding is in line with the previous
studies (Ravichandran 2009, Sarwar 2013, Pet-
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Advances in Social Science, Education and Humanities Research (ASSEHR), volume 186

chkhum 2014, Park & Park 2014, Park et al. 2014,
Abu-Shanab & Haddad 2015, Park et al. 2015,
Thongjuephong 2016). Additionally, whenever stu-
dents have a health problem, it may result in their
poor academic performance.
5 RECOMMENDATION
We found that Smartphone addiction had negative
impacts on a social relationship, family relationship,
health problem, and poor academic performance of
the students. In addition, it also caused mood fluctu-
ation and mood disorder among high school stu-
dents. These could lead to a social problem. Some
parents use a Smartphone to keep their children si-
lent without concerning about its impacts. Parents
nowadays should be acknowledged about the nega-
tive consequences of the Smartphone so they can
explain their children properly. They should be with
their children more which will make them attaching,
committing, and involving in family, school, and
community. The most likely they are attached to the
family, school, and social institution; the more likely
they will be away from the Smartphone
Mass media should pay attention to this issue by
providing information about the consequences of
Smartphone usage through TV programs, radio,
games, cartoons, movies, and TV series. Hence, stu-
dents, parents, and people, in general, would be con-
cerned more on this problem.
This study focused on students in the Eastern re-
gion of Thailand. However, the sample size is quite
small. Future studies should be conducted in other
areas of Thailand. Comparative studies among dif-
ferent parts of the country should also be important
to pile up the body of knowledge on this topic. Dif-
ferent kinds of research should be employed to get
more in-depth finding. In addition, other conse-
quences of Smartphone addiction should be also ex-
amined.
6 CONCLUSION
We are nowadays living in the globalization era. In-
ternet-based technology has been developed and
changed dramatically. A Smartphone is one of the
most important technologies enhancing people to
connect and communicate easier and faster. Howev-
er, it also has various drawbacks. It causes a health
problem, poor family relationship, poor social inter-
action, and poor academic performance. It also leads
to mood disorder among high school students. To
deal with this problem, parents and young people
should be acknowledged about the consequences of
using Smartphone through various media channels.
Most importantly, the parents themselves should pay
more attention to their children by giving them more
time and affection.
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