There was a recent study done on cellphone usage among college students that had some intriguing results. The study was based on an online survey of 164 college students at Baylor University in Texas. Regarding daily cellphone use, it was discovered that females spend an average of 10 hours a day on their cellphones while males spend 8 hours. Assuming everyone sleeps, on average 8 hours each day, that leaves 16 hours in the awake state. Looking at these results again shows that college students spend about 50-62% of their active day on their cellphones. That is quite a percentage, but there are some clear reasons why students keep checking their cellphones.
One of the major reasons is for social networking: checking up on the latest updates on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter and chatting with their friends. According to the study, the top cellphone activities were “texting (an average of 94.6 minutes a day), followed by sending emails (48.5 minutes), checking Facebook (38.6 minutes), surfing the Internet (34.4 minutes) and listening to their iPods. (26.9 minutes)”. The creation of the smartphones we see today is largely responsible for such prevalent use as it made mobile internet access more accessible. It is very easy nowadays to take out your phone, open the Facebook app, and send out a quick status update, and then open up an internet browser and just browse away.
Another reason for using cellphones is that they provide an “escape mechanism” from the classroom. This applies largely to long lecture-style classes as students just get bored sitting for more than an hour listening to the professor talk. In my opinion, there are several simple ways to fix this. Class times can be shortened to about an hour or professors can structure their lectures to make them more engaging and help encourage active class participation. I am sure that students would enjoy such restructured classes and rely less on their phones as an “escape mechanism.” In fact, 1 male student reported that they used their cellphones just to “waste time.”
The study also discussed a relationship between cellphone activities and genders. There were 24 cellphone activities examined and they found that “the time spent on 11 of these activities differed significantly across the sexes.” Women were more inclined to use cellphones for social reasons while men were more occupied with their phones for utilitarian or entertainment purposes. I can attest to this finding as I usually use my phone to catch up on the news or play a game here and there, but I occasionally do open up Facebook to see what my friends are up to. Unfortunately, some types of activities are associated significantly with cellphone usage, such as Pinterest and Instagram. Surprisingly, internet use and gaming were not seen as addictive, but I believe that this is because cellphones are mostly used for social networking.
Cellphone usage among college students is definitely on the rise due to the proliferation of a variety of social networking apps and their use as an escape mechanism from the classroom. With this increase in use, addiction comes in to play when people can’t stay away from their cellphones and this undermines their purpose, which is to be used as a helpful tool. In regards to the classroom setting, developing more engaging classes would most likely reduce cellphone usage during class time and provide a greater outcome for the students. As it turns out, cellphones, specifically smartphones, are typically used as a distraction from the classroom, but can, and should, be considered as useful tools for accessing the internet and providing a platform for apps that can aid in the classroom environment.
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