The correlation between Smartphone Addiction and Psychiatric Symptoms in College Students

일 대학생들의 스마트폰 중독과 정신건강과의 관계

Purpose: This study was designed to identify the relationship between smartphone addiction and psychiatric symptoms and the difference in severity of psychiatric symptoms by the degree of smart phone addiction in order to raise awareness of mental health problem. related to smartphone addiction in college students. Methods: Two hundreds and thirteen university student survey data was collected from December 5th to 9th of 2011 in South Korea using smartphone Addiction Scale, and the Symptom Checklist-90-Revision that was translated with korean for the psychiatric symptoms. Results: Respondents were classified as upper addicted (25.3%) and lower addicted group (28.1%). Addicted scores were positively correlated with psychiatric symptom scores. Obsessive-compulsive score was the most highly correlated with addiction scores. There were significant different in psychiatric symptom scores by the groups. Upper groups was 1.76 times higher than lower in total psychiatric scores. The addicted group used smartphone significantly longer per day and more satisfied with than lower addicted group. Conclusion: Although the smartphone was first introduced not so long ago, the addiction rate is exponentially increasing in students. The results proved that there is an inevitable correlation between the smartphone addiction and the severity of psychiatric symptoms.