Smartphones and Our Students:A Case of Undergraduate Students in an EFL Context

Immoderate smart phone usage usually makes the students addicted to it and spends less time reading lecture notes and textbooks. This study aims to determine university students' usage of smart phones and perceived rejection of paper books in an EFL context. The study collected data through a 20-item structured questionnaire consisting of the general characteristics, the number and hours of general smart phone usage, the daily usage of textbooks or paper books, and via the online short version of Smart phone Addiction Scale (Kwon, Kim, et al., 2013) administered to200 Iranian EFL participants aged ≥ 18 years and recruited from the Department of Humanities and Biological Sciences in Rabe Rashid Higher Education Institute (RRHEI), Tabriz, Iran. Results of the online SAS showed that the participants had a mean SAS-SV score of 47.02 (SD = 4.235), so theywereregardedasexcessivesmartphoneusers.Also,resultsofquestionnaireindicatedthatthe majority of participants were more inclined to spend an alarming amount of time on their smart phones rather than on their lecture notes and textbooks. The author concludes that students inRRHEIarestronglyaddictedtosmartphonesandthisaddictivebehaviormakesthemspendless time reading textbooks and using university library. The author ultimately gives some useful tips onhowtomitigatethenegativeeffectsofsmartphones.Theresultsofthisstudypromisepractical implications for policy-makers, parents, and academics and their students.