Abstract

Purpose: This study was conducted to describe the state of middle school students' addicted use of a cellular phone and their psychosocial characteristics and to examine differences in psychosocial factors as impulsivity, stress, anxiety and classroom attitudes according to the level of addiction. Method: As the subjects of this study, 747 middle school students who use a cellular phone in B Metropolitan City were selected through stratified random sampling, and they were asked to answer a self-administered study questionnaire. Data were analyzed using frequency, descriptive statistics, $x^2-test$, t-test, and one-way ANOVA. Results Among the respondents, 15.7% fell into the addicted user group while 56.0% fell into the dependent user group and 28.3% turned out to be non-addicted users. The levels of impulsivity, stress and anxiety were higher in the addicted user group than in the dependent user group and the non-addicted user group. The addicted user group also showed a very bad learning attitude. Conclusion: Addiction to the use of a cellular phone, which may have negative influences on the users' psychosocial characteristics, needs to be detected earlier, and preventive education should be offered in order to prevent such addiction.

Keywords

• Cellular phone;
• Addiction;
• Impulsivity;
• Stress;
• Anxiety

• 휴대폰;
• 중독;
• 충동성;
• 스트레스;
• 불안;