Paper Info
Title
Why can't we be separated from our smartphones? The vital roles of smartphone activity in smartphone separation anxiety
Abstract
Smartphones provide many advantages for people's daily life, which makes the phone become a valuable attachment object. Attachment to a smartphone may have negative psychological consequences, such as anxiety about being separated from the smartphone. Considerable research has been done on smartphone separation anxiety (or nomophobia). However, they are rarely concerned about the impact of smartphone activity on it. The purpose of this study was to examine the effects of mobile activity on smartphone separation anxiety by emphasizing the uniqueness of the phone itself and the importance of the activity. The present study examined the anxiety levels of 1733 Chinese young adults (mean age = 19.13, SD = 1.28) in four imaginary scenarios in which they could not engage in mobile activity. Our study found that computers did not alleviate the separation anxiety that individuals experience when they interrupt their smartphone activity. Furthermore, smartphone separation anxiety may depend on the type of mobile activity currently being disrupted. The anxiety when interrupting online activities was more related to the unavailability of the phone network, and anxiety level in stopping offline activities was more associated with the unavailability of the phone power. These findings help to understand smartphone separation anxiety.
Year
DOI
Venue
2020
10.1016/j.chb.2020.106351
Computers in Human Behavior
Keywords
DocType
Volume
Smartphone separation anxiety,Mobile activity,Smartphone attachment,Nomophobia,Mobile unavailability
Journal
109
ISSN
Citations 
PageRank 
0747-5632
0
0.34
References 
Authors
0
3
Name
Order
Citations
PageRank
Jia Nie100.68
Pengcheng Wang200.34
Li Lei311.04