Smartphone addiction, sleep quality and musculoskeletal disorders in students

Objective: Smartphone addiction may lead to many health issues. Excessive smartphone usage has been linked to musculoskeletal disorders and sleep problems. We aimed to examine the correlation between smartphone addiction, sleep quality and musculoskeletal disorders. Materials and Methods: 60 university students were included in the study. Individuals' smartphone addiction, sleep quality and musculoskeletal disorders were evaluated with the Smartphone Addiction Scale (SAS), Pittsburgh Sleep Quality Index (PSQI) and Cornell Musculoskeletal Discomfort Questionnaire (CMDQ), respectively. Results: There was a weak correlation between SAS and PSQI’s sleep efficiency, sleep disturbance, daytime dysfunction subscales, PSQI total score, and CMDQ’s lower extremity and spine subscales (p=0.021; p=0.020; p=0.008; p=0.008; p=0.029; p=0.019). There was a well correlation between SAS and CMDQ’s upper extremity subscale and CMDQ total score (p=0.001) Conclusion: It was concluded that as smartphone addiction increases in students, musculoskeletal disorders increase. Smartphone addiction was particularly associated with the neck, shoulder, back, upper arm, wrist and hip regions. It was also concluded that smartphone addiction worsens sleep efficiency, sleep disturbance, daytime dysfunction and general sleep quality.