PSYCHOSOCIAL IMPACT OF SMARTPHONE AMONG COLLEGE GOING YOUTH

Media has become an integral part of daily life today. Everything which attracts the public attention has its positive and negative effects. People spend their time on social media through Smartphone, for various purposes like doing business, writing emails, doing academic research finding answers to questions, playing games and the like. Among the Mobile phones, the Smartphones are widely used and are very popular with adolescents worldwide. Compared to the traditional mobile phones, the Smartphones are superior in quality with their numerous functions that include communication and entertainment. According to the latest estimates, 2.71 billion people use Smartphones worldwide1 and were expected to grow to 3.8 billion by 2021. These statistics is significant, because the modern Smartphones have begun to exist only since the iPhone's introduction in 2007. Hence, the Smartphone in general represents one of the most relevant hustles towards a digitally connected world.2 With the complexity of new technologies and constant enhancement of the technological abilities, the Smartphone users, more especially the academic students are becoming more addicted to Smartphones. In this paper, the researcher takes the readers to the world of youth who have merged into the ‘techno world’ of Smartphones and to show how the use of technology generally considered as a positive behavior, in the case of college going students becomes more as an addiction and causes numerous social and behavioral disorders in them.