Who’s at risk for smartphone nomophobia and pathology; the young or matured urban millennials?

• 出版年: Advanced Science Letters
• 第一著者: 2-s2.0-85032185327
• フォーマット: 論文
• 言語: English
• 出版事項: American Scientific Publishers 2017
• オンライン･アクセス: https://www.scopus.com/inward/record.uri?eid=2-s2.0-85032185327&doi=10.1166%2fasl.2017.9504&partnerID=40&md5=02764a8a501609a466c9db8688e260fb

Millennials were those born in the 20th century. This generation cohort is very exposed to technological advancement and gadgets. To live without a mobile phone is seems strange and illogical. It is like their best friend. The smartphones will always be with them. The devices are not only used for voice call and texting services. They used the smartphones to surf the internet, to send and check emails, playing online/offline games, taking pictures, live video sharing, time management, self-expression and running various mobile applications. Some of them are afraid of not having the device with them. This phenomenon is known as Nomophobia or No Mobile phone Phobia. Some might go up to the extents of facing shoulder stiffness, metacarpus illness, disturbance in work or study performance and other illness. This extend are knowns as Pathology or addiction. Recent research on smartphone addiction are on identifying factors influencing the addiction and typically related to negative outcomes of the addictions. However, this research will be investigating whether there is any difference between age group in influencing one’s to be a smartphone nomophobia or pathology. An explorative quantitative survey of 272 smartphone users who belong to a generational cohort of young and matured urban Millennials served as the respondents for the data analysis. The data were analyzed using Smart Partial Least Squares (SmartPLS3), which is the variance-based structural equation modeling software program. The results from multigroup analysis imply that openness significantly affects the young urban millennials smartphone users to become nomophobia and subsequently turns into pathological. While the device hardware features have a positive significance effect on the matured urban millennials smartphone users to be nomophobia and subsequently turns into pathological. Surprisingly, software features of the smart device and two of the personality dimensions only affect the young urban millennials smartphone to be nomophobia but no evidence of becoming a pathologist. The key findings unraveled from this exploratory research afford rich insights for theoretical and practical implications. © 2017 American Scientific Publishers. All rights reserved.