The Effect of Mobile Phone Use on Life Satisfaction of Junior and Senior High School Students: Including Email Use

Abstract

This study was conducted for the purpose of following 2 points. (1) Investigating the actual state of mobile phone use by junior and senior high school students. (2) Clarifying the causal relationships among use of mobile phone and email, dependence on mobile phone, and degree of life satisfaction. Results indicated that those using mobile phones for long periods of time showed increased dependence on mobile phones, and those with high dependence on mobile phones showed lower life satisfaction. In addition, a difference among sexes was recognized regarding email usage time. Among boys, we detected no effect of email usage time on increased dependence on mobile phones. However, among girls, we detected an effect resembling that of mobile phone use - that life satisfaction in girls was reduced. Moreover, we also found partially opposite cause and effect relationship among the factors noted above, indicating that low family satisfaction and health satisfaction raised mobile phone dependence, and high dependence on mobile phones led to increased use of mobile phones and emails. These results suggested that mobile phone and email use by junior and senior high school students do affect life satisfaction and that careful attention needs to be paid to such usage.