Addictive personalities & problematic mobile phone use

A research study was done on addictive personalities and problematic mobile phone use in 2009. The study passed out 570 surveys; only 444 surveys were used. To set up the study, the researchers determined the traits that could indicate problematic mobile use such as gender, self-monitoring, and approval motivation. These traits are also indicative of addictions like alcohol, drugs, and internet use.

The study also examined and analyzed other similar studies done in countries like Australia and the UK. According to a different study done in 2005, it was noticed that technological advancements such as the ability to personalize ones phone by color, ringtone, wall paper, can enhance the over attachment one might feel with their phones. The investigators took this all into account and predicted that they could expect loneliness would be a high predictor of problematic phone use and addiction.

The predictor variables they used (independent variable) were as follow:

• · Gender
• · Self-monitoring
• · Approval motivation
• · Loneliness

The dependent variables used in this study include:

• · problem mobile phone use scale
• · The reported time per week spent using a mobile phone
• · The reported number of people the participant talked with regularly
• · The reported time per week spent writing/reading text messages
• · The reported number of people the participant exchanged text messages on a regular basis

After determining the mean, standard deviation, skews and all the mathematical part of the research, it was concluded that high self-monitoring was linked to addictive behavior, approval motivation had a close relationship with problematic mobile use but a weak relationship with time spent writing/reading texts, Gender was a weak predictor of problematic phone use, and loneliness could not predict problematic mobile phone use but could predict the overall use of the dependent variables such as time spent using a phone and writing/reading texts.

It was noticed that lonely people tend to be introverts and they tend to be less susceptible to problematic phone use. This is the complete opposite of high self-monitors who are extraverts who are susceptible to peer pressure.

I was impressed that loneliness could not be an indicator for addiction or problematic use. However, it did correlate with the dependent variable for the time used in texting, phone use, etc. The researcher concluded that future studies had to be conducted in order to fully comprehend the psychological traits that indicate problematic phone use.

The gender indicator, I also found interesting. There was a weak relationship among it and problematic use. But it was visible that females were more likely to experience more problematic use than males. The investigators inferred that cultural or ethnical backgrounds could influence addictive behaviors. When compared to an Australian study, this relationship was not visible. However, the relationship is visible in Asian countries. According to another study done in Japan, it was seen that females did not have such a high relationship with problematic phone use because of societal pressures on how women are supposed to behave.

Consequently, this study reminded me of the study I participated in my journalism class last semester. The study was conducted on 200 students. We were to go 24 hours without the use of any media. Phones, laptops, internet, newspapers, iPods were all included. I handled the assignment pretty well. I finished my class assignments on time and read half of a novel I had been meaning to start. I did not have any distractions and it felt pretty nice. I guess I can attribute my success to the fact that I’ve watched to many films about technological robots taking over the world and how we must not be so dependent on items like iPods and laptops. However, I probably was in the group of few people who enjoyed this experience. Most of my other classmates couldn’t handle it and broke the 24 hours. Some even stated that they went through light symptoms of withdrawal.

Our study was pretty successful and was featured in many news articles. The following link is one of them, and provides details about our findings.

http://bit.ly/bg2Bj3