Investigating the Smart Phone Addictions of Vocational School Students from Different Variables

Abstract

Nowadays, smartphones are used by individuals of all ages for communication, messaging, online or offline gaming, social media browsing and information access. Smartphones, which are frequently used by students for any purpose, increase the level of smartphones dependency of the students and affect them negatively. The purpose of this study is to examine the smartphone dependency levels of vocational college students. Students' smartphone dependency levels are examined according to whether they have a social media account, their smartphone usage goals, smartphone usage times, gender, class degree and family income levels. The survey model was used to collect the research data. Participants of this study are students who are studied at different vocational colleges in Sakarya University at the academic year of 2017-2018. The personal information form created by the researcher to collect data and "Smart Phone Dependency Scale - Short Form" were used that adapted by Noyan et al (2015) to the Turkish language. According to the results, students who were participating in the survey were moderately smartphone addicts. And again as a result of the research, it was seen that female students were more addicted to smartphones than male students. Students in business and public relations programs were found that they were more addicted to smartphones than students in computer programming. In addition, students whose family income level is between 4001-7000 TL are more likely to be addicted to smartphones than students in other family income groups. Another result is that students who use more than 5 hours of telephone use are more addicted to other students and students who use the phone between 3 hours and 5 hours are more smartphone addicts than students who use telephone between 0-3 hours. According to another research result, it can be said that the students who have any social media accounts are more addicted to smartphones than those who do not have social media accounts. Students using the Instagram social media account were found to be more smartphone addicts than students using Facebook. Students' smartphone dependency does not differ significantly from the class levels that they study, smartphone renewal times, and the operating systems that they use on their phones.