Sociological Cultural Studies

Sociological Cultural Studies

Inter generational comparison of the prevalence of nomophobia and its causes in Iran: A case study of the University of Science and Culture

Document Type : .

Authors
Zahra Ojagh 1
Zohreh Ebrahimi Atani 2
Ebtesam Razavi Dinani 3
1 Department of Cultural Studies and Communication, Institute for Humanities and Cultural Sturdies
2 PhD Student in Communication Sciences, Department of Communication Sciences, Science and Research Branch, Islamic Azad University, Tehran, Iran.
3 - Department of Communication, Arak Branch, Islamic Azad University, Arak, Iran.
10.30465/scs.2025.52831.3052
Abstract
This paper aims to compare the prevalence of nomophobia between people belonging to the “X and Y” generation and people belonging to the “Z and Alpha” generation among students, employees, and professors of the University of Science and Culture in the second semester of the academic year 2024-25 and to identify its causes in Iran. For this purpose, a theoretical synthesis of the four dimensions of nomophobia and the theory of dependency was used. The study subjects consisted of 384 people which were selected from the statistical population of7600 people. The data were collected by using validated Nomophobia Scale (NMP-Q) by Yildirim and Correa (2015) and analyzed using SPSS software. The difference across the categories of independent variables on each of the dependent variable (nomophobia) for each generation was examined by ANOVA. According to findings, Generations Alpha and Z are more dependent on smartphones than Generations X and Y. Among the factors of Nomophobia, "lack of access to information" had the highest mean (21.86), but the factor “loss of connection" with value of 0.048 for partial Eta squared played the main role in the intergenerational difference in the components of Nomophobia.
Keywords
Nomophobia
Intergenerational comparison
Smart phones
Survey
NMP-Q