Smartphone Usage, Interpersonal Communication, and Emotional Intelligence Among Adolescent Students in Addis Ababa
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Date
2023-12
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Addis Ababa University
Abstract
Adolescents' smartphone exposure has shown an increment in recent years. Individuals in this age group use smartphones for purposes like texting, calling, social media, gaming,entertainment, and education. However, excessive usage of smartphones impacts adolescents' well-being in several aspects. The present study sought to determine smartphone usage's relationship with adolescents’ emotional intelligence and interpersonal communication competence skills in different high schools in Addis Ababa. 394 adolescents (female = 230, male = 163) from six high schools in the Nifas Silk Laphto Sub-city (grades 9-12) completed a validated measure of emotional intelligence and interpersonal communication competence skills. To determine smartphone usage, the amount of time spent on smartphones on weekdays and weekends was asked. The sampling technique used to choose schools from the woredas was simple random sampling. Then stratified sampling was used because of the heterogenous nature of the population. The results indicated that emotional intelligence and smartphone usage have a statistically significant inverse relationship. (r = -0.115). The relationship between interpersonal communication and smartphone usage is also inverse but not statistically significant (r = -0.05) whereas emotional intelligence and interpersonal communication have a strong relationship (r =
0.602). A regression analysis showed that smartphone usage significantly predicted emotional intelligence but its predictive value towards interpersonal communication skills was not significant.