Can Mobile Addiction Result in Psychological Disorders?

According to a recently conducted study on the effects of excessive use of mobile phones, teenagers using mobile phones incessantly for several hours can suffer from psychological disorders later in their life. The study was conducted by a team of researchers under University of Granada’s Francisca Lopez Torrecilas. The research team surveyed a number of individuals between the ages of 18 and 25 years living in Granada of Spain.

According to Torrecilas, majority of the social changes occurring in the past decade is due to addictions. She mentioned: the primary difference between common addiction forms like drug addiction, alcoholism etc and mobile phone addiction lies in the fact that mobile addiction apparently never results in physical effects; excessive use of mobile phone leads to psychological problems. She also remarked that as mobile addicts never get any serious physical symptoms and suffer mainly from psychological disorders, their problems often go unnoticed.

The study found out that close to 40% of the young adults confess that they use mobile phones for over 4 hours in a day. A large share of these individuals gets extremely upset, if they don’t receive responses to their text messages or missed calls. According to the study, the mobile addicts possess the tendency of neglecting important activities like socializing, studying etc. Generally, such individuals don’t admit their disorder, but spend significant amount of time either talking on mobile phone or typing messages or waiting for messages and calls. The study has also found that majority of the mobile addict lack self esteem and find it hard to develop social relations.

In a statement Torrecilas mentioned that a mobile addict might become extremely upset if the mobile is taken away from him or her. They suffer from extreme irritability and anxiety if the mobile is switched off. Sleeplessness and other sleeping disorders may also occur in people addicted to mobile phones.