Social anxiety, perceived stress level and perceived social support as predictors of smartphone addiction among undergraduate students in Malaysia

• Main Authors: Chua, Pei Yi, Chuah, Yi Ting, See, Jie Sheng
• Format: Final Year Project / Dissertation / Thesis
• Published: 2022
• Subjects: H Social Sciences (General); HN Social history and conditions. Social problems. Social reform; HT Communities. Classes. Races
• Online Access: http://eprints.utar.edu.my/4520/1/FYP_PY_CPY_2022.pdf; http://eprints.utar.edu.my/4520/
• Institution: Universiti Tunku Abdul Rahman

The issue of smartphone addiction is rising consistently among university students due to theemerging technologies which may bring numerous negative psychological impacts to theexcessive smartphone users. Present study was conducted to examine the social anxiety,perceived stress level and perceived social support as predictors of smartphone addictionamong undergraduate students in Malaysia. In this study, a quantitative analysis researchmethod and convenience sampling method were implemented. There were 118 universitystudents who aged from 20 to 25 years old and self-declared as daily smartphone users wererecruited in this study. The survey was distributed to the university students from differentstates in Malaysia through online platforms. Qualtrics was utilised to create the survey andIBM SPSS version 26 was used to analyse the data. The instruments include SocialInteraction Anxiety Scale, Perceived Stress Scale, Multidimensional Scale of PerceivedSocial Support and Short Version of the Smartphone Addiction Scale were used. Simple andmultiple linear regression analysis was applied to study the predictors of smartphoneaddiction. The result showed social anxiety positively predicted smartphone addiction, whileperceived stress level and perceived social support were not significant in predictingsmartphone addiction. Present study was expected to contribute to updating the psychologyresearch database of social anxiety, perceived stress level and perceived social support aspredictors of smartphone addiction among undergraduate students in Malaysia.