The Effect of life stress, interpersonal skills, and self-control on smartphone addiction tendency in nursing students

Objectives The purpose of this study is to explore the effect of life stress, interpersonal skills, and self-control on smartphone addiction tendency in nursing students. Methods A cross-sectional study was used to study 200 nursing students, recruited from one university in Gyeonggi-do. The data was collected from May 1 to 30, 2024. The instruments for this study were demographic factors, RLSS(Revised Life Scale for College Students)-CS, Relation Change Scale, Self-control, Smartphone Addiction Proneness Scale for Adult. The data were analyzed using descriptive statistics, Pearson’s correlation coefficients, t-tests, one way ANOVA and stepwise multiple regression. Results Life stress(r=.384, p<.001), interpersonal skills(r=-.197, p=.005) was correlated significantly with stress in smartphone addiction tendency. As a result of stepwise multiple regression analysis smartphone usage time, age, life stress, interpersonal skills were discovered to account for 59.3% variance of smartphone addiction tendency. Conclusions The results of this study provide a better understanding of the factors affecting smartphone addiction tendency of nursing students. A smartphone addiction prevention program is needed in order to reduce life stress, to improve interpersonal skills.