Phone happy

If we didn’t already have the word “ubiquitous” in the English language we would have had to invent it to describe the smartphone. Mobile phones, also known as cellular phones depending on your hemisphere of origin, are everywhere. These phones offer obvious advantages, otherwise they would not be so popular but the psychological question is what are the downsides, if any, of rampant phone use? In a new study researchers conceded that for university students phones allow them to stay connected with family and friends and to use the internet for a multitude of purposes. Yet, the researchers also wondered if such prolific phone use might have some negative consequences.

To study this the researchers interviewed more than 500 university students about their phone usage. They also gained permission to access the students’ academic records and have them a series of questionnaires to establish their emotional state.

Analysis of the results showed that the higher the rate of phone use, the lower the academic results. This might just be a question of time spent on the phone when study could be happening and so phone use might just be the contemporary expression of people less dedicated to their studies. However, there were other interesting findings.

It also emerged that higher rates of phone use were correlated with higher levels of anxiety and lower levels of happiness. The researchers say that their analysis showed that the combined low academic results and increased anxiety led to the drops in happiness. However, the question still remains as to whether excessive use of the phone causes anxiety or does anxiety lead to excessive phone use. Somewhere in there, the drop in results also comes into play.

If you feel like asking university students to stop using their phones you might also like to ask the French to give up on their brie and red wine while you are at it. Phones are here to stay, at least until an asteroid takes out the phone network, but if you do know someone who is struggling at university and is showing the strain of it all, perhaps making yourself available for face to face support might help ease the burden. Could it be that the paradoxical isolation that smartphone connectedness can bring could be part of the problem. It’s all conjecture at this stage, but phones are ubiquitous and we all know that too much of anything can be a bad thing.