Tied to Tech: The Connection Between Personality Traits and Nomophobia

Abstract

The formation of mobile information and communication technology, particularly smartphones, has significantly influenced human contact, employment, education, entertainment, and lifestyle during the past decade. Despite the clear advantages of smartphones, the worries related to their usage are increasingly worrisome for end users, parents, educators, professionals, and researchers. A significant issue that has lately arisen is nomophobia, characterised as the anxiety of being unable to access or utilise one’s smartphone. This study investigates the prevalence of nomophobia among smartphone users and how Big Five Personality traits influence nomophobia behaviour. A total of 244 smartphone users were surveyed utilising the purposive sampling technique. Nomophobia the Scale and the Big Five Inventory served as devices for data collecting. A multiple regression analysis was performed to ascertain whether the big five personality traits forecast the degree of nomophobia. The data were analysed via IBM SPSS version 28. The results indicated that most smartphone users in the Klang Valley, Malaysia, had moderate levels of nomophobia. The regression analysis results demonstrated that all research variables (extroversion, openness to experience, awareness, agreeableness, and conscientiousness) showed a significant correlation with nomophobia. The study concluded with several limitations regarding sample size and diversity, self-reporting bias and lack of qualitative information. This study may be further up by looking from another perspective, including longitudinal data, environmental context and other intervention variables.