Today, what fifteen-year-old kid doesn’t have a cell phone ? According to the National Institute of Statistics, almost none. Parents provide them to adolescents because that is how they are located, but perhaps they would not do so with such joy if they knew that ” half of adolescents use the phone that is borderline addictive .”
José Luis Carrasco, a psychiatrist at the San Carlos Clinical Hospital in Madrid, says it, adding that the smartphone hooks as much as cocaine or other drugs . “It is a serious addiction. The person who suffers from it is not able to concentrate on anything, and without what provides a stimulus, that is, the mobile, he becomes irritable,” says Dr. Carrasco. When such a problem arises, the solution is to remove the phone. It can also be prevented taking into account the profile of the potential addict. ” Of an impulsive nature, he does not tolerate monotony and is prone to get hooked on anything that gives him immediate gratification ,” explains this psychiatrist.
A recent study from the universities of Salamanca and León, published in the European Journal of Investigation in Health, Psychology and Education , set out to evaluate the patterns of mobile phone use among the adolescent population enrolled in Secondary Education centers. They have also evaluated psychological (anxiety, depression) and behavioral correlates and their association with school performance.
To carry out the study, they had 528 students, aged between 12 and 19 years, belonging to five educational centers, four public and one subsidized. The instruments used were the Beck Depression Assessment Questionnaire (BDI), the Beck Anxiety Assessment Questionnaire (BAI), the scales of low self-esteem and school problems of the Personality Questionnaire MMPI-A, and the Questionnaire for evaluate the excessive use of the Mobile (COS).
The results indicate that a significant percentage of students who abuse the mobile phone show depressive and anxious symptoms and low self-esteem . 14.8% of the participants obtain scores that place them in a high or high range of school problems, in turn linked to pathological use of the mobile phone. All these results show the need to propose interventions that reduce maladjusted behavior patterns and improve school coexistence.
