The Association Between Smart Phone Addiction and Psychological Distress Among Adolescents – A Review Based Analysis

Abstract

Purpose: The usage of smartphones in the present decade has been increasing rapidly and is playing an important role in human lives, especially the adolescents who are getting addicted to their smartphones. Adolescents give more attention and time to their smartphones for a prolonged period. It has become compulsive to be hooked on to their smartphones which results in loss of focus in studies leading to poor performance in academics and various other physical and social actives in their lives. In this paper, existing research studies on smartphone addiction and its association with psychological distress among adolescents has been extensively reviewed. The main aim is to find the level of addiction with smartphone and its relation with anxiety, stress, loneliness and depression. To explore the influence of parental support and identify if there are gender differences in terms of smartphone addiction among adolescents. Design/Methodology/Approach: This review paper is based upon thematic structure, consisting of already existing research studies. Systematic literature, ensuing the publication of 30 studies that focused on identifying smartphone addiction among students and having a correlation with psychological distress like anxiety, stress, loneliness, and depression. Systematic literature scrutiny was performed using the search words "smartphone addiction”, “psychological distress," “adolescents “and “students” in the electronic databases Research gate, Google Scholar, PsycInfo, and Academia. Findings: Studies shows that smart phone addiction is associated with psychological distress like anxiety, stress, loneliness, and depression. When it comes to gender differences, some studies have shown that the variable is not significantly related with smartphone use. A few researches have been done to study the association amid smartphone addiction and parental influents. Although evidence is limited, psychological wellbeing of adolescents can be damaged by the excessive use of smartphones. Paper Type: Systematic literature review-based analysis.