An Investigation of College Students in their Smartphone Use Behavior

This study aimed to investigate college students as regards their smartphone use behavior. Three research questions, each of which respectively contained five sub-questions, were proposed by the researchers. Forty one freshmens from three departments of Chienkuo Technology University provided on-site responses to the fifteen items. Concerning the functions available on smartphone, the result of analysis indicated that Facebook and Line were the top two most-used functions on smartphones, followed by the Web and making call. This implies students enjoyed social working and visiting community websites to a great extent. They spent a lot of time looking for friends and receiving message from friends. They were less interested in playing games on smartphones. With respect to the amount of time spent on smartphone, the participants were found to spend more than three hours a day on smartphones. They enjoyed using smatphones even before sleeping. They had moderate use of smartphones in class or on campus. This suggested that they used smartphone whenever and wherever possible. However, they were cared about daily duties despite their prolonged use of smartphones. Over use of smartphone might lead to low academic achievement. Concerning the influence on users' behavior, this study found students had developed smartphone dependency to a considerable degree. They felt uneasy and anxious whenever and wherever smartphones were unavailable. Luckily, they still valued human relations in the real world.