Smartphone addiction avoidance via inherent ethical mechanisms and influence on academic performance

Abstract

Due to smartphones’ high use and penetration, it has become pertinent to interrogate addiction issues concerning inbuilt user control mechanisms and relative use for academic enhancement among university students. Based on the postulations of the uses and the gratification theory and utilitarian theory of ethics, it has been framed that smartphones are not the key issue but how smartphones are used. The study adopted a survey research design using a questionnaire instrument to collect data from 250 students at a university in Lagos, Nigeria. The findings revealed that smart attachment and addiction are extremely high among the students. However, user controls are not just a matter of default inbuilt ethical control mechanisms, but also deliberately habitual towards academically relevant outcomes. It was also revealed that how one uses smartphones and what one uses smartphones for, are more critical to academic performance than understanding and satisfaction with the inherent inbuilt control mechanism. In essence, good management of smartphone attachment or addiction issues is more of a matter of habit than it is about inherent ethical smartphone controls. The study, therefore, concluded that manufacturers must take active measures to align smartphone ethical inherent controls with emerging artificial intelligence. Such synergy would suffice to orient users toward improvement. Also, active smartphone user philosophy for self-benefitting purposes is vital. In other words, both manufacturers and users of smartphones have a role in smartphone attachment–addiction management–not just ethical inherent control mechanisms.