No Time For Reading, Addicted To Scrolling: The Relationship Between Smartphone Addiction And Reading Attitudes of Turkish Youth

Abstract

The concept of “leisure time” originally refers to times that one does not work, but mentally improves themselves. Reading, is the primary activity that helps people to improve themselves in this way. However, today, most of the youth see reading books as a tiring activity to do, and it is an undeniable fact that, especially young peoples’ leisure times are occupied by smartphone technology which provides them many facilities of entertainment. Accordingly, this study aims to search if there is a relationship between addictive smartphone usage and book reading attitudes of Turkish youth. Through implementing the survey method on 344 young participants, this study found that although females seem to have more positive attitudes towards book reading, smartphone addiction of youth does not reveal a difference in terms of gender or education level. More importantly, it is found in this study that addictive smartphone use has a negative impact on book reading attitudes of Turkish youth in general. This finding is significant considering the essentiality of reading books for youth, and decreasing rates of extra-curricular or off work book reading around the world.
 
Keywords: Book reading attitude, Smartphone addiction, Leisure time, Youth