Age Differences in Problematic Mobile Phone Usage among Africans

Smartphone has become an integral part of our everyday life. Their uses come with loads of benefits. Howbeit, a lot of research has shown that many individuals are associated with problematic usage of smartphone. While research in HCI has established how the problematic use of mobile technologies might lead to a range of socio-cultural and health-related issues, little or no study has reported on the context of African. Hence, this study has two main aims. First, we investigate the usage of mobile phones among sub-Saharan African's, with an emphasis on any potential or imminent problematic usage pattern. Second, we conduct a comparative analysis of the factors leading to problematic usage among 236 participants (from a distinctive age group) out of a total of 751 participants that responded to standardized measures of problematic mobile phone usage behaviours and their associated factors. We employ the Structural Equation Modeling to the analysis of empirical data, which reveals significant differences and some similarities on problematic smartphone usage behaviours between young and older adults. While Depression and Cyber-orientation emerged as the most significant determinants of problematic phone usage for younger adults (less than 21), Withdrawal and Positive Anticipation emerged as the strongest determinant for older adults (above 40). We discuss the implications of our findings to the development of techniques for identifying (and designing) just-in-time behavioural change interventions specific to the cultural context sub-Saharan Africa.

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