Impact of Smartphones on Students
Problem Statement
With the advanced technology nowadays, smartphone is viewed as a important device and an integral part of the Malaysian society. According to The Sun Daily Report, a last year concluded analysis revealed that Malaysia’s smartphone penetration has increased to 63% in year 2013 from 47% in 2012, while tablet penetration has increased almost three times to become 39% from 14% (Afrizal, 2013). University students are among the highest contributors to the increasing number of smart phone sales (Jacob & Isaac, 2008). However, often use of smartphone can become a habit or dependency of student and indirectly affect their lifestyle. There are several general aspects of lifestyle have been categorized, such as health, education, psychology, socialization and security, in which may be in the positive side or the negative side.
Regarding impact of smartphone in business field, Rashedul Islam, Rofiqul Islam & Tahidul Arafhin Mazumder (2010) states that the drastic growth of the businesses during past few years is mainly because the rising use of smartphones and the mobile application. Smartphone has made the feature of advertising business sector becomes interesting and effective. However, the negative impact of smartphone is towards the PCs market as shown in survey result of year 2011, smartphone’s shipment in that full year was 487.7 millions, exceeds PCs with 17.63%. Smartphones nowadays are much more fomidable than the PCs that 10 more years ago, people are now using the smartphone to check news feed, status update and photo posting as well (Mogg, 2012). Microsoft-Intel Alliance as the long dominated of PCs also faced pressure to get into the market of mobile device. Soon, PCs may be replaced by smartphone as smartphone seems to have a optimistic growth in the future although there is still million sales of PCs in every year (eWeek, 2012).
Accordingly health surveys regarding smartphone done by Sarwar & Soomro (2013), most of the users in USA use smart phone to search for the information and facilities related to health. Many health mobile applications are available stimulate users for prescription management, encourage other options of treatment, offer price comparison and verification of prescriptions as well. However, Russian and Eastern European scientists issued the earliest reports that low level exposure to RF radiation of smart phone could cause a wide range of health effects, including behavioural changes, effects on the immunological system, reproductive effects, changes in hormone levels, headaches, irritability, fatigue, and cardiovascular effects (Russian National Committee, n.d.). In addition, research of World Health Organization suggested this behaviour is similar to a compulsive-impulsive disorder, whereby an inability to access the services are associated with negative health consequences, including withdrawal and depression and other negative repercussions such as social isolation and fatigue (WHO, 2011). According to Coleman (2013), smartphones can also contribute to the deterioration of our eyes, squash our spines, give us saggy jowls, damage our hearing, damage our sleep cycle and cause dark circles under our eyes.
Meanwhile, in term of education, Sarwar & Soomro (2013) indicated that smartphone has provided society to be exposed towards huge amount of educational and learning purposes due to internet availability and increasing demand of smartphone. Regarding the survey of King (2012), majority of the American adults think that smartphone usage contributes a positive impact towards the youth’s education in America, eg. E-readers for study purpose. Students with the help of technology are able to access educational programs (Font, 2013). For instance Dell has launched Youth Learning (an alphabetization initiative) which support the learning programs. Besides that, smartphone provides a basic human need to help students relieve their boredom and decompression between tasks (Shawn Knight, 2012). However, there is some negative impact of smartphone dependency on education. Over dependency of smartphone can leads to addiction, means although there is no real need’s communication, still hope to have constant communication with outside through social network. (Lee, 2012). According to the The Times of India: Health, (2013) experts said that our memory will be reduced and cognitive thinking will be killed when using the smartphonealthough it makes the life more convenient and easier. People now depend much on the search engine through smartphone cause them to become poor thinker and getting more lazy than before.
For impact onto psychology, based on another research of Sarwar & Soomro (2013) conducted, there is a positive impact onto human psychological, smartphone is used for reduction of tension work life. Nowadays, keep update with the latest news is very vital process for reducing tension. However, negative impact of smartphone dependency exists. Spending more than seven hours a day using smartphones and experiencing symptoms such as anxiety, insomnia and depression when cut off from the device is considered as addiction (Nam, 2013). Students who are addicted to smartphones not only distract themselves from studies, but also damage their interpersonal skills. According to Sarwar and Soomro (2013), addiction to smartphones affects our quality of sleep as well as creates friction in our social and family life.
For lifestyle of socialization, the survey of Yi-Fan Chen done in U.S. College shows that students have several strong socialization motives for using the mobile phone to contact both family and friends (CHEN, 2007). Smartphone features, for examples, text to speech, GPS and social Websites, people can easily remain integrated with society especially those with special needs and elderly age (Sarwar & Soomro, 2013). However, the report of Amanda (2012) shows that over dependent of smartphone brings the impact of there is only 35% of the teens who owns a smart phone have face-to-face socializing outside of school. According to Teoh (2011), Americans are socializing and spending the average time of 2.7 hours per day on their mobile device. The time people used to socialize via mobile device is twice of the time spending on eating and is more than one third of time spending on sleeping per day.
For impact of smartphone on security, Sarwar & Soomro (2013) stated that safety of children can be known by parents with the availability of Internet connection through a Smartphone. Furthermore, by setting up password security, it can protect the sensitive data inside the smartphone and also restricts access in case the smartphone was lost or been stolen. (BullGuard Security Centre, 2013) According to Enisa’s report (2010), the data leakage from smartphone may affected our assets throughout such as personal data, corporate intellectual property, classified information, financial assets and etc. If smart phone user lost the smartphone, for example, every information like address, e-mail, log data in web browser, SMS (Short Message Service) and etc. can be exposed if there is no appropriate security solutions (Smith, 2011). Next target for criminal attacks likely will be smartphone and social networking site (Sarwar & Soomro, 2013). According to WhoCalledMyPhone.Net (as cited in Darrell, 2013), 24% of smartphone users check their phone while driving, which can directly cause accidents or fatal accidents.
In short, smartphone has contributed positive impacts to human, but too much dependent on smartphone also cause negative consequences. Hence, our study will put more effort on the impacts of smartphone dependency into lifestyle. Smartphone brings impact to various fields such as business, health, education, psychology, socialization and security as well. However, during our research, the target of study area is among undergraduate students in UUM. Hence, some fields are not suitable for students for instance business. In short, there are only five lifestyles which will be used for our survey, include health, education, psychology, socialization and security.
References
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