Behavior associated with mobile phone usage and its effect on health. Nomophobia

Abstract

Introduction Smart phones today have become an important part of our techno-culture, especially among the younger population. Discomfort, anxiety, nervousness or anguish caused by being out of contact with a mobile phone is termed as "Nomophobia"-no mobile phobia.

Materials and methods: This study is a synthesis of different scientific concepts, bibliographic studies, thesis, extract from statistical publications. A observational descriptive study was carried out in 560 respondents.

Discussion results. Study included 357 (64%) male students & 203 (36%) female students. Only 10% of the respondents are having less than 4 years of smart phone usage tenure, while 90% of respondents found to use smart phones from more than 4 years. Along with the normal usage like calling (100%) & texting (32%), the various reasons for smart phone usage are Email (23%), Gaming (73%), internet surfing for information (97%), study related use (67%), social sites (100%), various apps (100%) & music (100%) are found be the most likely reasons for having smart phones in respondents. More than 94% of respondents spend more than 100Rs a month on internet (72% of respondents spend more than 200Rs per month), while only 6% respondents are found to spend less than 100Rs on internet. Less than 7% of respondents mentioned that, in a day approximately 3-4 hours are spent on mobile, while the large crunch of respondents (93%) found to spend more than 3 hours in day on smart phones, in that 79% of respondents are found to spend more than 5-6 hours on smart phones. Out of 560 respondents, 82% of the respondents agreed to irritability in their behavior, 61% of respondents said to become anxious quite often, 78% reported to lack of sleep (due to gaming mainly), aggression was reported by 65% of respondents while stressful conditions, loneliness & loss of interest in studies were reported by 54%, 31% & 63% respectively.

Conclusion: *Smartphone’s are technologically superiors, while providing various applications with which many things are become easy to do, connectivity with the world etc.

*Unknowingly the dependency is leading to irritability, aggression, lack of sleep, loss of interest in studies, stress, which is actually related to development of psychological conditions if not well controlled in time. More over such conditions are very silently progressing, to which students are unaware.

*Diverting students from such applications is very difficult, but making them aware of its future health & psychological conditions, is the need of time. This can be done by the society or family members by limiting the use of smart phones.