The association between academic achievement, psychological distress, and smartphone addiction: A cross-sectional study among medical students

ABSTRACT

This study investigates the relationship between academic achievement, psychological distress, and smartphone addiction in medical students. In total, 513 medical students voluntarily completed a survey that included the Personal Information Questionnaire, the Smartphone Addiction Scale-Short Version (SAS-SV), the Depression, Anxiety and Stress Scale (DASS-21), and the Interaction Anxiousness Scale (IAS). Results showed that 321 participants were screened positive for smartphone addiction and the prevalence of smartphone addiction was 62.6%. We found that the prevalence of smartphone addiction was higher among male rather than female students (67.1% vs 58.2%; p = 0.039). There were significant differences between the smartphone addiction group and the smartphone non-addiction group as per the DASS-21 scores and the IAS scores. In addition, multiple regression indicated that psychological distress including anxiety, stress, depression, and social anxiety might be the predictors of smartphone addiction. However, smartphone addiction was found to have no significant correlation with academic performance in 274 undergraduate medical students. In conclusion, the study revealed the high prevalence of smartphone addiction in medical students. Smartphone addiction was associated with states of depression, anxiety, stress, and social anxiety, and there was no significant relationship between academic performance and smartphone addiction in undergraduate medical students. Further longitudinal research is needed to clarify the causal relationship between smartphone addiction and psychological distress.

KEYWORDS:

• Smartphone addiction
• academic achievement
• psychological distress
• cross-sectional study
• medical students

Acknowledgments

We would like to appreciate all participants in the study, as well as the personnel who assisted in the data collection.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Ethics approval and consent to participate

All experiments were approved by the Ethics Review Committee of The Third Xiangya Hospital, Central South University. Consent for publication: Not applicable.

Authors’ contributions

Q.O.Y, Q.L.and S.K.Y. generated the data for the manuscript and wrote part of the manuscript. S.Y.K.and P.Y.S. discussed the results of the study and provided technical support. S.Y.K. and J.W.W. edited the manuscript.

Data availability statement

The data used to support the findings of this study are available from corresponding author upon reasonable request.

Additional information

Funding

This study was supported by the Hunan Provincial Health Commission Project (202103050178). Hunan Provincial Clinical medical technology innovation guide project (2020SK53601).