Role of self-regulation in controlling cyber loafing and smartphone addiction: Reducing health risk at the university level

CONTEXT: Mobile phones have evolved into tools providing a virtual environment and frequently used for remote teaching strategies. Besides its unavoidable alternative in different situations, excessive use of the mobile phone has changed behaviors and influences interpersonal relationships and may also have a harmful impact on health and happiness. To overcome these issues, several approaches have been introduced to identify and minimize the smartphone addiction. Literature reveals that self-regulation, smartphone usage, cyberloafing, and general self-efficacy have a prominent role in mobile phone addiction. AIMS: The aims of the current study were to analyze and optimize the role of considered factors to overcome the excess mobile phone usage and its addiction. METHODS AND MATERIAL: Using the random sampling technique, an adopted questionnaire was utilized to collect data of 500 university level students. The target population consisted of 5000 university level students. STATISTICAL ANALYSIS USED: A complete and comprehensive model was established using structural equation modeling. RESULTS: Findings revealed that there is a significantly negative effect of self-regulation on both cyberloafing and addiction, while smartphone usage has a positive effect on smartphone addiction. Similarly, self-efficacy positively affected the cyberloafing, resulting in positive effects on the smartphone addiction. CONCLUSIONS: Awareness, smartly planned lessons, learning materials, recommended applications, and restricted technologies can be effective in controlling the smartphone addiction and their health-related problems. Additional factors such as students’ disengagement from tasks, lack of context familiarities, and the boring nature of the task or teaching method may increase the mobile addiction. For this, extra curriculum activities and support programs can significantly reduce the mobile use.