Undergraduate students’ perception of smartphone addiction and its impact on themselves and their academic performance: a case study

Abstract

The main objective of the present study was to investigate undergraduate students’ perception of smartphone addiction and its impact on themselves and their academic performance in Takhar province. 1321 participants from Takhar University and 4 private universities responded to an online survey questionnaire. The researchers used SPSS Version 26.0 to analyze the data. The findings revealed that undergraduate students were highly addicted to smartphones, and the excessive use of smartphones had an adverse effect on the academic performance of students. The results showed that there were statistically significant differences in smartphone addiction by the respondents’ gender, access to social media and daily hours of smartphone usage. Moreover, a strong negative correlation was found between smartphone addiction and its impact on students’ academic performance. The findings of the study are crucial to higher education leaders because they may help them develop policies to reduce the excessive and inappropriate use of smartphones in classrooms.