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العنوان
Smartphone addiction and its relation to Social Phobia in female University students \
المؤلف
Assran, Zainab Khaled Mohamed.
هيئة الاعداد
باحث / زينب خالد محمد
مشرف / جيهان مدحت النحاس
مشرف / هشام عبد المجيد حتاته
مشرف / ضحى مصطفى الصيرفي
تاريخ النشر
2022.
عدد الصفحات
158 p. :
اللغة
الإنجليزية
الدرجة
الدكتوراه
التخصص
الطب النفسي والصحة العقلية
تاريخ الإجازة
1/1/2022
مكان الإجازة
جامعة عين شمس - كلية الطب - الطب النفسي
الفهرس
Only 14 pages are availabe for public view

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Abstract

Background
The smartphone has become an essential part of daily life and research has shown that certain people become so attached to their device that they experience separation anxiety when it is not with them (Cheever et al., 2014), Smartphone addiction is considered as one form of technological addictions, technological addiction is defined as one type of behavior addiction that involves human-machine interaction and is non-chemical in nature. Smartphone addiction consists of four main components: compulsive behaviors, tolerance, withdrawal, and functional impairment (Griffiths 2015).
Among factors affecting smartphone use are aversive emotions and negative experiences, as they result in a need for distraction and avoidance of chronic stressors, that may result in addictive behavior, so, anxiety can be a risk factor of problematic smartphone use with strong association between stress, general anxiety, and PSU (Elhai et al., 2018).
Along social interactions, socially anxious people search for reassurance, but, they are always afraid of negative evaluations during face-to-face interactions, so, they prefer virtual social interactions as they experienced less social anxiety due to less stress and more reassuring social interactions (Lee and Stapinski 2012), as a result, they keep checking their smartphones for new messages and updates and they spend more time on the device on social networking sites due to easy accessibility of virtual online interactions than real face to face interactions, also, they feel comfortable with being anonymous especially physically, so, higher levels of social anxiety are related to longer time spent using smartphone (Elhai and Contractor 2018).
Smartphones have both considerable benefits as well as exposure to online risks such as access to inappropriate content and abusive interaction with others, which could have a detrimental effect on mental health (Ghosh 2020), these new technologies can lead to depression, social anxiety and other types of anxiety and sleep disorders such as insomnia, interrupted sleep, and early morning wake up, revealing significant relation between sleep problems and smartphone addiction (Lu and Lo, 2017).
Drivers who use smartphones while driving pay attention to their mobile not to other road hazards and this leads to increased risk of accidents according to WHO study (Olsen et al., 2013).
The problematic smartphone use may cause financial burden especially among students due to spending part of their budget in charging their internet data, phone bills which may even exceed their financial limits (Lee et al., 2014).
The treatment strategies need to focus on engaging smartphone users into more physical activities and into real social networks focusing on face-to-face interactions rather than interacting through social media apps (Kim et al., 2015).
Social phobia is a disabling mental health problem that begins before or during adolescence, it is usually associated with significant impairment as it increases the risk of dropout from school, work absence, unemployment, and utilization of social welfare, causing significant financial costs for society, and reduced quality of life. Among university students, social phobia symptoms arise in a great number of students or previously existing symptoms increase, students go into the effort of having himself or herself accepted by others (Maki, 2015).
Social anxiety disorder is strongly associated with other mental disorders, comorbidity rate of up to 60% has been reported with the most common comorbidities being other anxiety disorders and affective disorders, especially depression, also, SAD has been found to be a risk factor for alcohol and cannabis dependency, the distress caused by the comorbidities increases the suicidal behavior of individuals with social phobia (Leyfer et al., 2013).
Individuals with social phobia had reduced quality of life in all areas of life, including physical and psychological health, social relationships, so, society should realize those negative consequences and also hazards of problematic smartphone use, so, there is a strong need to raise public awareness regarding both social phobia and smartphone addiction (Bernroider et al., 2014).
Subjects and methods:
This is a cross sectional study that was held among different faculties of Ain Shams University with stratified random sampling of female students of first grade from two practical faculties (Faculty of Medicine and Faculty of Sciences) and two theoretical faculties (Faculty of Psychology and Faculty of Laws) at Ain Shams University, it recruited only Egyptian female students who accepted to participate in the study with age range from 18-19 years and uses a smartphone, meanwhile, students with medical, neurological, mental illness due to medical illness or mental illness due to substance or medications or those who refuses to participate in the study were excluded, with total number of sample was 540 student.
Tools:
After collecting socio-demographic data according to psychiatric sheet of the institute of Psychiatry at Ain Shams University, the participants were assessed by SCID-I to exclude any psychiatric disorders other than social phobia, then, they were assessed by social phobia inventory to determine presence and severity of social phobia, also, they were assessed for smartphone addiction severity by smartphone addiction scale.
Results:
The main findings in the study are that there is high percentage of Social phobia among female University students, also, there is high percentage of Smartphone addiction in them, both Social phobia and Smartphone addiction was positively correlated.
Those findings were in agreement with previous studies examining the Smartphone addiction and it’s relation with Social phobia.