An Assessment of Compulsive Smartphone Usage and Mental Health among Indian Adolescents

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DOI: https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.19181659

Shruti Verma and Dinesh Nagar (Department of Psychology, Barkatullah University, Bhopal, Madhya Pradesh)

Lately in India, the rapid transition of smartphones from a luxury communication device to an important instrument for social connectivity has led to a significant increase in compulsive usage among adolescents. This transition was fast-tracked by the post-pandemic shift to online learning, which has made the device a fundamental “survival tool” that deeply influences mental health. Stratified random sampling was used to select 247 out of 400 12th-grade students of Bhopal and to evaluate mental health. The data was collected using the Compulsive Smartphone Use Scale (CSUS) constructed by the researchers consulting the SAS (Kwon et al., 2013), and the NMP-Q (Yildirim & Correia, 2015), questionnaires and the mental health was assessed using an instrument adapted from the 28-item General Health Questionnaire (GHQ-28), which was originally derived from the GHQ-60 (Goldberg & Hillier, 1979). The findings revealed that the Academic Stream is a primary predictor of compulsive usage, with Arts-Commerce students exhibiting higher levels of technological and psychological dependency than their science peers. Female students got higher academic grades but reported a significantly higher cumulative burden of mental health distress particularly regarding social dysfunction and somatic symptoms. Further, it was found that compulsive usage is a robust predictor of anxiety, insomnia, and depression, with usage often serving as a “digital compensation” for real-world social anxieties. Young people should be guided to recognize the “Perception-Performance Gap,” where the smartphone is often mistakenly credited for academic management while simultaneously undermining internal stability. For this, educational institutions should implement gender-sensitive mental health interventions and digital literacy programs so that technology remains a boon rather than a psychological hindrance. True autonomy and self-regulation should be fostered within students rather than relying on compulsive digital escapes.