Frequency of Smart Phone Usage in Medical Students and its Association with Academic Performance

Abstract

Background: Smart phone use is becoming a severe mental health problem as it is becoming dominant with the passage of time leading to dependency and diverting individual’s concentration. The addiction is not only confined to youth, it can be observed among individual of all ages. Through this study our aim was to observe the smart phone usage frequency and its association with academic performance among university students.

Methodology: A cross sectional study was conducted on a total of 400 students of Dow university of health sciences between January 2016 – January 2017. The problematic mobile phone usage scale (PUMP) was used to evaluate the smart phone addiction level and grade point average (GPA) of previously attended semester was analyzed to evaluate its association with academic performance.

Results: It was observed that 134 out of 400 participants were spending 1-2 hrs. daily on mobile phone usage. A strong association was observed between frequency of smart phone usage and academic performance. Moreover, control loss and dependence were also affecting the academics among the study participants. In this study we observed that female students with frequent smart phone use had greater chances of having poor academic performance as compared to males.

Conclusion: It can be concluded form the study results that excessive smart phone usage affects academic performance and hence results in increased dependence leading to lack of concentration, decreased confidence, reduced public dealings and face-to-face interactions. Furthermore, the use must be restricted as in long term it is leading to several health issues especially among youth.