Article Preview
TopIntroduction
The term “smartphone addiction” (SA) was introduced to describe dysfunctional excessive use of smartphone that resemble addictive behaviours (Kwon et al., 2013a). Without clear guidelines, researchers have adapted existing criteria of Internet Gaming Disorder from the fifth edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders to devise measurements of SA (Kwon et al., 2013a; Kwon et al., 2013b). SA can be conceptualized as excessive or compulsive use of smartphone with detrimental outcomes (Lin et al., 2017; Rozgonjuk et al., 2018). The ubiquity of smartphones enables these devices to surpass the internet as possible source of behavioural addiction (Barnes et al., 2019). The effects of SA are directed to physical functioning of users, including musculoskeletal discomfort (e.g. İNal et al., 2015), and poorly coordinated physical movement (Appel et al., 2019). Empirical investigations also extend the effects of SA on users’ psychological well-being, as intense involvement with smartphone impairs sleep cycles (e.g. Demirci et al., 2015), and induces difficulties in emotional regulation (e.g. Ikeda & Nakamura, 2014). Recently, SA was associated with severe social dysfunction; individuals with intense preoccupation with mobile devices tend to be socially withdrawn, which is an indication of impaired social functioning (Tateno et al., 2019). As behavioural addiction and its aversive outcomes tend to persist into different development stages (Englund et al., 2008), the need to understand the psychological effects of SA is paramount (Shin & Biocca, 2018). As depicted by recent empirical research, the term smartphone zombie was used to describe individuals with sluggish physical movement due to preoccupation with smartphones (Appel et al., 2019; Duke & Montag, 2017). It has been empirically supported that overreliance on smartphones is impairing the function of users, preventing them from being effective individuals in managing daily hassles such as social interaction (e.g. Tateno et al., 2019).
One plausible explanation to the detrimental effects of smartphone usage is the distractibility of mobile devices that occupied users’ cognitive capacity; the mere presence of smartphones is sufficient to distract users; this phenomenon is known as smartphone-induced brain drain (Ward et al., 2017). Overreliance of smartphones induces structural deficits to brain regions, resulting in impairment to certain functions that are relevant to information processing (Chun et al., 2018; Horvath et al., 2020; Hu et al., 2017; Schmitgen et al., 2020). The ubiquitous smartphones also expose individuals to large volumes of information (Misra & Stokols, 2012), which reduced their concentration span (Pea et al., 2012). The additional restraint on the limited cognitive capacity impairs users’ capabilities to decipher complex emotions from other individuals (Chun et al., 2017). Failure to perform in an acceptable manner inhibits individuals from engaging in social activities, which could be the plausible cause for the observed social withdrawal amongst smartphone users (Tateno et al., 2019). Hence, apart from sluggish physical movement (Appel et al., 2019; Duke & Montag, 2017), this research proposes that smartphone zombies also portray the mindless state in social interaction due to inability to interpret social cues from the other individuals. This research intends to address this by examining the relationship of SA and the severity of autism, with theory of mind as the intervening variable. In other words, this research examines how the overuse of smartphones reinforces the inability to establish connectedness with non-clinical individuals.