The European Conference on the Social Sciences 2014

Brighton, United Kingdom

The European Conference on the Social Sciences 2014

Brighton, United Kingdom

The European Conference on the Social Sciences 2014

Brighton, United Kingdom

Evidence suggests that the excessive use of mobile communication technologies may
lead to uncontrollable emotional attachment to the device and various other
problematic behaviours. Therefore, a gap exists in identifying the extent to which
excessive use can result in the development of distinguishable addictive tendencies
and personality inconsistencies among male and female users. The primary purpose of
this study was to identify the mobile-device addiction indicators that are pertinent
among students within a South African university. The secondary purpose of this
study was to investigate whether demographic and psychological attributes of
individuals were related to m-addiction (in general). A quantitative study was
conducted using a self-administered questionnaire on a probability sample of 187
university students, aged between 18-28 years. Exploratory factor analysis identified
four m-addiction indicators, namely; tolerance (.891), dysfunctional life (.847),
compulsion (.810) and dependency (.802) depicting adequate internal reliability and
homogeneity among the scale items. From the study, it emerged that gender (p < 0.05)
and self-esteem (p < 0.01) were statistically significant in terms of predicting the
overall m-addictive tendencies among students. Although these findings may present
novel implications for social psychologists and mobile software application
developers; it is noteworthy to mention that this research did not intend to create an
exposé of behaviour that could incontestably be categorised as a bad habit, but rather
aimed to unravel the potential negative consequences and related psychological
indicators of m-addiction among a student populace.
Keywords
Mobile device, addiction, tolerance, compulsion, dependency, dysfunctional life.

Nobukhosi Dlodlo