Problematic Use of Mobile Phones in Australia…Is It Getting Worse?

Abstract

Rapid technological innovations over the past few years have led to dramatic changes in today's mobile phone technology. While such changes can improve the quality of life of its users, problematic mobile phone use can result in its users experiencing a range of negative outcomes such as anxiety or, in some cases, engagement in unsafe behaviors with serious health and safety implications such as mobile phone distracted driving. The aims of the present study are two-fold. First, this study investigated the current problem mobile phone use in Australia and its potential implications for road safety. Second, based on the changing nature and pervasiveness of mobile phones in Australian society, this study compared data from 2005 with data collected in 2018 to identify trends in problem mobile phone use in Australia. As predicted, the results demonstrated that problem mobile phone use in Australia increased from the first data collected in 2005. In addition, meaningful differences were found between gender and age groups in this study, with females and users in the 18–25 year-old age group showing higher mean Mobile Phone Problem Use Scale (MPPUS) scores. Additionally, problematic mobile phone use was linked with mobile phone use while driving. Specifically, participants who reported high levels of problem mobile phone use, also reported handheld and hands-free mobile phone use while driving.

Nomophobia: Is the Fear of Being without a Smartphone Associated with Problematic Use?

“…Although problematic mobile phone use has been explored throughout Australia [ 38 ], our study is the first to explore nomophobia among an Australian sample. This study consists of the second largest sample size ( n = 2838) in any nomophobia study to date [ 31 ], revealing a mean nomophobia score of 69.4 (moderate) among respondents.…”

Perception of Sleep Disturbances due to Bedtime Use of Blue Light-Emitting Devices and Its Impact on Habits and Sleep Quality among Young Medical Students

“…Several studies showed the negative effects of bedtime blue light-emitting-device use on sleep due to its association to cognitive stimulation [1,4,6,7,[14][15][16][17][18] and/or to problematic excessive use [9,[18][19][20][21][22][23][24][25][26][27][28].…”

“…It is assumed that impaired sleep leads to many serious consequences in health as overweight/obesity or mood disorders and increased accidents [1,2,[4][5][6][7][8][9][10][11][12][13]. Appropriate behavior and environment are thus critical to achieve adequate quality and quantity of sleep.…”

“…On the other hand, there is an emergent problematic and worrying excessive use of these new technologies in people of all ages reported by several studies [9,[18][19][20][21][22][23][24][25][26][27][28]. As we are all conscious of bedtime, wake time and the subjective quality of sleep, our appreciation of the importance of the sleep-wake cycle should be further enhanced when confronted with the consequences of its disruption [29].…”

Behavioral Health at School: Do Three Competences in Road Safety Education Impact the Protective Road Behaviors of Spanish Children?

“…Moreover, the results of this experience highlight the explanatory link between latent factors and actual behaviors reported by children, and this has been a common constraint to the performance of further predictions in merely descriptive studies, which usually employ smaller or excessively local samples. Nevertheless, it is worth remarking two potential shortcomings related (respectively) to the structural analysis and the contents of the instruments we used: first that-although significant-the Standardized Path Coefficients (SPCs) remain considerably low in magnitude (which does not invalidate the results but suggests their careful interpretation) and, second, that for this study we did not consider in depth the emergence of new factors that could potentially get involved in the road safety dynamics of children, and which may also threaten or compromise their behavioral performance, such as cellphones and other information and communication technologies [55,56]. It is noticeable how the use of technological devices has been progressively becoming more and more frequent in the young populations, as part of other research and interventions in the field of Education for Road Safety, and should be therefore considered in further studies addressing a similar research problem.…”