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Over-connected? A qualitative exploration of smartphone addiction among working adults in China
BACKGROUND: Smartphones currently dominate people’s lives and interests due to their increased affordability and functionality. However, the negative aspects of smartphone use, such as smartphone addiction, have recently been brought up. This study utilized a qualitative approach to explore the symp...
Autores principales: | , |
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Formato: | Online Artículo Texto |
Lenguaje: | English |
Publicado: |
BioMed Central
2019
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Materias: | |
Acceso en línea: | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6582542/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/31215473 http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/s12888-019-2170-z |
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author | Li, Li Lin, Trisha T. C. |
author_facet | Li, Li Lin, Trisha T. C. |
author_sort | Li, Li |
collection | PubMed |
description | BACKGROUND: Smartphones currently dominate people’s lives and interests due to their increased affordability and functionality. However, the negative aspects of smartphone use, such as smartphone addiction, have recently been brought up. This study utilized a qualitative approach to explore the symptoms of smartphone addiction among working adults in China and the psychological factors that affect such addiction. METHODS: Semi-structured interviews, either face to face or via Skype (online), were conducted with 32 Chinese workers. The collected data were analyzed using a thematic analysis approach in Nvivo 10 software. RESULTS: This study identified four typical symptoms of smartphone addiction, namely, withdrawal (e.g., experiencing negative feelings when having no access to smartphones), salience (e.g., constant checking and thinking about smartphones), conflict (e.g., smartphone use interferes with family and work life), and phantom phone signals (e.g., illusory perception of a phone vibrating or ringing). Conscientiousness, neuroticism, and extroversion increase the likelihood of smartphone addiction. Notably, this study found that conscientious workers are likely to develop smartphone addiction, a finding that is contrary to those of the majority of existing studies on technological addiction. CONCLUSIONS: This study revealed various smartphone addiction symptoms among young Chinese workers, and these include withdrawal, salience, conflicts, and phantom phone signals. Conscientious, neurotic, and extroverted employees are likely to exhibit these symptoms. |
format | Online Article Text |
id | pubmed-6582542 |
institution | National Center for Biotechnology Information |
language | English |
publishDate | 2019 |
publisher | BioMed Central |
record_format | MEDLINE/PubMed |
spelling | pubmed-65825422019-06-26 Over-connected? A qualitative exploration of smartphone addiction among working adults in China Li, Li Lin, Trisha T. C. BMC Psychiatry Research Article BACKGROUND: Smartphones currently dominate people’s lives and interests due to their increased affordability and functionality. However, the negative aspects of smartphone use, such as smartphone addiction, have recently been brought up. This study utilized a qualitative approach to explore the symptoms of smartphone addiction among working adults in China and the psychological factors that affect such addiction. METHODS: Semi-structured interviews, either face to face or via Skype (online), were conducted with 32 Chinese workers. The collected data were analyzed using a thematic analysis approach in Nvivo 10 software. RESULTS: This study identified four typical symptoms of smartphone addiction, namely, withdrawal (e.g., experiencing negative feelings when having no access to smartphones), salience (e.g., constant checking and thinking about smartphones), conflict (e.g., smartphone use interferes with family and work life), and phantom phone signals (e.g., illusory perception of a phone vibrating or ringing). Conscientiousness, neuroticism, and extroversion increase the likelihood of smartphone addiction. Notably, this study found that conscientious workers are likely to develop smartphone addiction, a finding that is contrary to those of the majority of existing studies on technological addiction. CONCLUSIONS: This study revealed various smartphone addiction symptoms among young Chinese workers, and these include withdrawal, salience, conflicts, and phantom phone signals. Conscientious, neurotic, and extroverted employees are likely to exhibit these symptoms. BioMed Central 2019-06-18 /pmc/articles/PMC6582542/ /pubmed/31215473 http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/s12888-019-2170-z Text en © The Author(s). 2019 Open AccessThis article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made. The Creative Commons Public Domain Dedication waiver (http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/) applies to the data made available in this article, unless otherwise stated. |
spellingShingle | Research Article Li, Li Lin, Trisha T. C. Over-connected? A qualitative exploration of smartphone addiction among working adults in China |
title | Over-connected? A qualitative exploration of smartphone addiction among working adults in China |
title_full | Over-connected? A qualitative exploration of smartphone addiction among working adults in China |
title_fullStr | Over-connected? A qualitative exploration of smartphone addiction among working adults in China |
title_full_unstemmed | Over-connected? A qualitative exploration of smartphone addiction among working adults in China |
title_short | Over-connected? A qualitative exploration of smartphone addiction among working adults in China |
title_sort | over-connected? a qualitative exploration of smartphone addiction among working adults in china |
topic | Research Article |
url | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6582542/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/31215473 http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/s12888-019-2170-z |
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