An Investigation into Smartphone Usage and Nomophobia among Journalists in Pakistan

Abstract

Background & Study Aim: Nomophobia, a digital-age spinoff, is often linked to smartphone usage with varying degrees of consequences for different segments of the society. Various studies depict that this digital pathology has affected individuals, mainly the students and academia with limited research about individuals from different professions. In view of the dearth of research about professional circles, particularly the journalists, who heavily depend on and remain occupied with the smartphones for hours to get news updates, collect and process information, and disseminate news, this cross-sectional, non-experimental, correlational study has explored a relationship between smartphone usage and nomophobia among the active smartphone user journalists in Pakistan.

Methodology: This research has applied Smartphone Addiction Scale-SV developed by Kwon et al. (2013) and Nomophobia Questionnaire (NMP-Q) Scale developed by Yildirim and Correia (2015) to measure the phenomenon using purposive sampling and data was collected from (N=1005) journalists who are literate enough to understand English language and registered with any of the press clubs in Pakistan.

Findings: The findings of the study suggest that majority of the journalists suffer from severe nomophobia, and there exists a significant positive relationship between smartphone usage and nomophobia among the study population. Moreover, smartphone usage positively predicts nomophobia among them. There exist no differences of prevalence of nomophobia among the journalists in context of gender groups. However, the older age journalists depict more tendency towards nomophobia as compared to the younger journalists.

Conclusion: The study concluded that majority of the journalists in Pakistan suffer from severe levels of nomophobia with a significant positive relationship between smartphone usage and nomophobia. Smartphone usage and nomophobia equally prevail among male and female journalists but the older age journalists are more inclined towards smartphone usage and nomophobia as compared to their younger colleagues.