engleski

Phubbing among Croatian students

Phubbing is a social phenomenon defined as looking at a smartphone during face-to-face conversation with another person. We will present results of Croatian participants as a part of an ongoing international study on Phubbing “A phubbing phenomenon - its predictors and consequences in a cross-cultural perspective” that is currently being conducted in Poland, Israel, Italy, France, Taiwan, India, Belgium, Brazil, the Netherlands, Turkey, Romania, China, the UK, Slovakia, Serbia, Hong Kong, Spain, Portugal, Ukraine, and Croatia. The research was conducted on 400 students, using e-questionnaires in October 2017. To survey technology-related habits we employed The Phubbing Scale (Karadağ et al., 2015) and Adapted Mobile Phone Use Habits (Smetaniuk, 2014). Additionally, we applied The Internet Addiction Scale (Karadağ et al., 2015), The Brief Self-Control Scale (Tangney et al., 2004), and assessed the number of hours participants were logged onto the Internet per day. To assess well-being, we applied one-item measures of general life satisfaction and overall happiness, Flourishing Scale (Diener, 2009) and Kessler’s six item K6 quantifier of non-specific psychological distress (Kessler, Barker, Colpe, Epstein, Gfroerer, & Hiripi, 2003). Preliminary data confirmed that phubbing is associated with higher frequency of mobile phone use, greater amount of time on the Internet, higher levels of Internet addiction, as well as lower levels of self-control. Although relationship to overall happiness and general life satisfaction was not found, those who reported more phubbing also showed higher frequencies of negative emotions experienced in the previous month (K6) and lower levels of flourishing. In this research we found that phubbing is moderately present among Croatian students. Comprehensive study of this phenomenon would enable us to monitor its proliferation in order to prevent possible negative outcomes.

Phubbing ; Well-being ; Face-to-face communication ; ICT

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