Prevalence of Nomophobia among University Students: A Comparative Study of Pakistani and Turkish Undergraduate Students

Abstract

This study focused on to examine prevalence of nomophobia among university students; and the relationship among nomophobia, self-esteem, loneliness and selfhappiness with respect to gender and year of study of the university students in Pakistan and Turkey. The study subjects consisted of 729 students 368 (50.5%) of which were from Turkey and 361 (49.5%) from Pakistan. The data were collected by using Nomophobia Scale (NMP-Q), UCLA Loneliness Scale (ULS-8), Self-Happiness Scale, and Rosenberg' Self-Esteem Scale by the researchers from Pakistan and Turkey respectively. The relationship and the effect of each psychological structure on nomophobia were examined with multiple linear regression model. The difference across the categories of independent variables on each of the dependent variables (loneliness, selfhappiness, self-esteem and nomophobia) and on linear combination of dependent variables for each country was examined by multivariate MANOVA. According to multivariate effects results, the main effect of gender on self-esteem and nomophobia was statistically significant which indicates that differences between male and female students with respect to self-esteem and nomophobia were significant. The study demonstrated differences between Turkish and Pakistani students' score on nomophobia, loneliness and self-happiness were significant, while difference on selfesteem across countries was not statistically significant.

Nomophobia: An Individual’s Growing Fear of Being without a Smartphone—A Systematic Literature Review

“…The research analyzed is eminently exploratory, descriptive, nonexperimental, correlational, and cross-sectional, using the questionnaire as a single research collection instrument [1,2,4,13,16,[18][19][20]23,25,26,[29][30][31][32][33]35,37,39,58,[61][62][63][64], presenting a quantitative methodological design. Others, however, extend this information with mixed methodological design, including qualitative techniques, such as interviews or discussion groups [5,20,24,65].…”

“…Most research aims to analyze the prevalence of nomophobia in different groups, whether students, clinic patients, or random people [1,18,19,23,29,30,32,33,36,37]. At the same time, some of them ask if there is any correlation between presenting nomophobia and other alterations of a psychic [5,13,25,26,35,[58][59][60] or physical [61] nature, as well as alterations in learning and attention [31,54], in academic performance [2], coping styles [4], or other psychosocial problems arising in the digital and smartphone era [11,15]. Similarly, there are studies that focus on determining risk factors in relation to certain personality traits [16].…”

“…However, other researchers have been interested in examining the relationship between nomophobia and physical factors, such as age [29,33,60], context [29], presence of Carpal tunnel syndrome or median nerve in the wrist [61], and gender [32,33,35,39,58]. Others have studied the relationship between nomophobia and psychic and psychological variables such as anxiety [20,33,37,39], panic disorder [5,20,59], stress [11], depression, avoidance or hostility [12,39], obsessiveness [12,25], FOMO (fear of missing out) [15], personality (extraversion, awareness, emotional stability and regulation, sympathy, and openness to experience) [12,13,16,26,33,35], mindfulness [58], and loneliness and self-happiness [26]. Moreover, others have studied the relationship between nomophobia and sociological, educational, and other factors, including Internet usage and social media [29,37], academic performance [2], learning and attention [13,62], socio-educational variables and collectivism [63], and social threat [11].…”

“…The samples used in the various studies vary considerably, both in number, where there is a range from one person to 3216, and in the population on which it is focused. First, in relation to the size of the sample, there are studies that have used a sample between one and 150 people [19,21,27,33,59,61], between 151 and 400 people [11,13,18,[23][24][25]30,31,34,35,60,62,64], between 401 and 1000 people [1,2,4,12,[14][15][16]22,26,29,32,36,37,39,58,63,65], or more than 1000 [7]. Second, with regard to population, studies have focused on volunteers of various classes and types [5,16,20,22,59,60], adolescents or youth [4,7,28,[34]…”

“…Nomophobia promotes the development of mental disorders, personality disorders [25], as well as problems in people's self-esteem, loneliness, and happiness [26], especially in the younger population [27,28]. All of this has a great impact on health, which has negative repercussions on other aspects of life such as study and work [29], by creating a strong dependence on mobile technology [30], affecting professional practice by provoking constant distractions [31].…”