Pathology of Cyberspace: A Study of the Detrimental Effects of Mobile Phones on Students' Psychological Well-being

Background In addition to their widespread applications in various fields, cellular phones have some inappropriate social consequences, including psychosocial addiction, degradation of values, reduced social interactions, early maturity and endangering the psychological well-being of users. Therefore, the present study aimed to investigate detrimental effects of Mobile phones on the psychological wellbeing of second grade students. Materials and Methods In this cross-sectional study, the sample population included 269 second grade students (107 boys and 162 girls) in Kermanshah, Iran in 2018 and being in the 10-18 age-range who were selected using cluster sampling. As for data collection, the Jenaro's Cell-Phone Over-Use scale and Ryff's psychological well-being scale were utilized, which were filled out by the students themselves. Results The results of the present study demonstrated that the means of the deleterious use of mobile phones and psychological well-being measured 44.71 +/- 16.45 (total score=126), and 63.86 +/- 14.43 (total score=84), respectively. The results also indicated that the observed F (F=10.12) was significant at p< 0.005, and the predictor variables together explained 0.33 of the variance of psychological wellbeing. Moreover, it was shown that the deleterious use of mobile phones and psychological wellbeing significantly and negatively correlated at p< 0.005, r=0.49. Conclusion According to this study, it was revealed that the deleterious overuse of mobile phones and psychological well-being were significantly and negatively correlated; which means that the higher the use of mobile phones, the more vulnerable the psychological well-being becomes.