The Prevalence of Smartphone Addiction and Its Associated Risk Factors among School Students of a Metropolitan City: A Cross-Sectional Study

Background: Smartphone is a term used to distinguish cell phones with advanced features from basic feature phones. Smartphone addiction is a phenomenon that pertains to uncontrollability of smartphone use. The increasing use of smartphones and easy availability of smartphones to school children after Covid-19 Pandemic were the reasons for conducting this study. Aims - To estimate the prevalence of smartphone addiction among school children and its associated risk factors Methods: This was a cross-sectional study conducted on English middle-school students of Mumbai, involving students from secondary section i.e.,6th to 10thgrade. Data were collected by interview using a pre-structured questionnaire, and all the students were asked to fill out smartphone addiction questionnaire i.e. Smartphone Application Based Addiction Scale (SABA). Then, data were entered into Microsoft EXCEL and analysed using SPSS. Results: The mean age of 275 participants, was 13.1, and the prevalence of smartphone addiction in the present study was 45.5%. Addiction was significantly associated with age (P value 0.000), gender (P value 0.004), self-owned phone (P value 0.03), duration of time spent on phone on weekdays(P value 0.000) and weekends (P value 0.000), having social media accounts(P value 0.000),and the time spent on social media (P value 0.042). On applying logistic regression, female gender and the time spent on social media were the major risk factors. Conclusions: The risk factors associated with addiction are age, female gender; owning a smartphone, increased time spent on phones on weekdays and weekends, having social media accounts and excessive time spent on social media applications.