Implications of smartphone addiction on university students in urban, suburban and rural areas

Smartphones are excellent connection tools that can join family members, continents apart, over a chat or birthday, but can hinder the communication between people in the same room. The different reactions to smartphones can be due to personal, cultural, economic or a combination of multiple factors with variable impacts. Several studies analysed the effects of smartphones on mental health as well as well-being. The limitation of most of these studies falls in the selected sample where all the respondents are assumed to belong to a coherent society/region. In this work, we categorise each respondent, based on his/her location, into urban, suburban or rural. The purpose of this study is to show that the relation between smartphone addiction and all the other factors varies with respect to the region or location.