Predictors of Smartphone Addiction and Social Isolation among Jordanian Children and Adolescents Using SEM and ML

Abstract

Smartphone addiction has become a major problem for everyone. According to recent studies, a considerable number of children and adolescents are more attracted to smartphones and exhibit addictive behavioral indicators, which are emerging as serious social problems. The main goal of this study is to identify the determinants that influence children’s smartphone addiction and social isolation among children and adolescents in Jordan. The theoretical foundation of this study model is based on constructs adopted from the Technology Acceptance Model (TAM) (i.e., perceived ease of use and perceived usefulness), with social influence and trust adopted from the TAM extended model along with perceived enjoyment. In terms of methodology, the study uses data from 511 parents who responded via convenient sampling, and the data was collected via a survey questionnaire and used to evaluate the research model. To test the study hypotheses, the empirical validity of the research model was set up, and the data were analyzed with SPSS version 21.0 and AMOS 26 software. Structural equation modeling (SEM), confirmatory factor analysis (CFA), and machine learning (ML) methods were used to test the study hypotheses and validate the properties of the instrument items. The ML methods used are support vector machine (SMO), the bagging reduced error pruning tree (REPTree), artificial neural network (ANN), and random forest. Several major findings were indicated by the results: perceived usefulness, trust, and social influence were significant antecedent behavioral intentions to use the smartphone. Also, findings prove that behavioral intention is statistically supported to have a significant influence on smartphone addiction. Furthermore, the findings confirm that smartphone addiction positively influences social isolation among Jordanian children and adolescents. Yet, perceived ease of use and perceived enjoyment did not have a significant effect on behavioral intention to use the smartphone among Jordanian children and adolescents. The research contributes to the body of knowledge and literature by empirically examining and theorizing the implications of smartphone addiction on social isolation. Further details of the study contribution, as well as research future directions and limitations, are presented in the discussion section.