Research Looks into Psychology of College Students When Using Mobile Devices

Everybody knows “that” person who is constantly on their cell phone, either texting or browsing social networks; if you don’t know anybody like this, which I highly doubt, then you are “that guy.” But why are so many people in our society turning into this person and obsessed with mobile applications? Melissa Major, a University of Maryland student and researcher, worked with other student-researchers Romy Zipken and Rachel Rosenthal to find out the effects mobile devices have on emotions, social networking and news.

“I wanted to focus on mobile psychology because I feel that this is a topic that is studied less than mobile uses. I also have a general interest in human behavior and emotions because I am a psych[ology] double major,” said Major.

The researchers surveyed a convenient sample of 122 undergraduate University of Maryland students “because it is a population that we are a part of, so we were interested to see the results.” A convenient sample means that the survey was given out to only one specific subculture that the researchers selected; in this case it was only UMd students. Of the 122 survey takers, 65 were female (86.7%), 9 were male (12%), and 1 person was transgender (1.3%). The survey also differentiated between who owned a smartphone (74.4%, 58 people) and who owned a basic phone (23.3%, 18 people).

These students answered questions asking what their emotional response would be if they didn’t have their mobile phone while waiting for a doctor’s appointment, on a date or at a large social gathering. They also were asked about how often they use Facebook and the corresponding mobile app as a news source. Finally, the survey questioned about a correlation between the length of time someone is a member of a social network and whether they use the corresponding mobile app.

This convenient sample found many significant correlations. Major and her partners found a significant negative correlation between the time spent on mobile applications daily and how often they post a comment about news on their profile (r= -0.355, p= 0.008). Although the researchers found that people did not comment about the news the more time they spent on the phones, they did find that people felt more comfortable discussing the news with another person if they spent more time on their mobile apps.

The common stereotype that women are more concerned about what people think of them and are always looking at themselves or friends on Facebook was also addressed in this study. It was found that for non-smartphone users, females spent more time on Facbeook [via the computer] than males. However, amongst smartphone users, males spent more time on the Facebook mobile app than females.

Another difference between genders was that for Facebook mobile and non-mobile users, males were more concerned about what others would think about them if they commented about current events. For mobile users, “ the average female concern level was 2.5, while the average male concern level was 3.6.” For non-mobile users, males’ concern level was slightly higher than females’ (3.0 and 2.93 respectively).

Although the researchers did find some significant results, positive and negative, there were some limitations to the study. 122 students agreed to the consent form at the beginning of the study, but only 78 students responded to every question in the survey. Another limitation involved a set of questions pertaining to how mobile Facebook apps affect students’ interactions with news content and peers. The preliminary question to this set asked if the survey taker owned a smart phone or a basic phone. Depending on the answer to this question, the follow-up questions split into two sections. Major said, “If I had to change anything with the survey, I would have not split the questions based on if you have a smart phone or not because it was difficult to compare the answers since the questions were different.”

The study also concluded that it was difficult to draw conclusions for some of the findings because so few people owned a basic phone; The sample size for non-smart phone users was very small. Another factor that could have skewed the results was that the majority of the survey was taken by females who have a different mobile behavior than males.