Seventeenth Annual
C of I   S T U D E N T   R E S E A R C H
C O N F E R E N C E
Saturday April 30, 2022
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Digital Implications: Smartphones and Student Life

AUTHOR: Lily Campbell
FACULTY: Cara Laney
DEPARTMENT: Psychology

ABSTRACT

In this technology-infused world with nearly no limit on what we can access, there is much to learn about how smartphones are actively influencing our actions, emotions, and motivation. Classrooms everywhere are implementing technology into their curriculum, with research highlighting both positive and negative impacts. What then can be said about the screen time, specifically with smartphones, that students engage in outside of the classroom? What correlations can be found between this often-staggering screen-use and the academic lives of these students? The present research used a series of surveys to investigate the relationships between smartphone screen time, academic motivation, and perceived stress among 48 College of Idaho students. Although, surprisingly, in this sample these variables were not significantly correlated, additional interesting findings emerged. A majority of students acknowledged that their screen time had increased over the prior two years (up to an average of more than 5.5 hours per day) and most students thought that smartphones could be a valuable classroom tool. Life-changing events such as the Covid 19 pandemic could be the reason for this rise in screen-time, due to the lack of normal social interaction and the likely increase in free time. The pandemic may also account for the fascinating lack of correlation among the researched variables, seeing how the shift to online learning may have altered student motivation and stress levels from where they used to be. Beyond speculation, further research is needed to understand any causal elements in this relationship.

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