An Evaluation of the Impact of Mobile Phones on the Socio-Educational Performance of the Students in Yazd

The objective of this study is to evaluate the impact of mobile phone on the socio-educational performance of the students in the city of Yazd. In order to do that, we used the theory of uses and gratification which provided a useful theoretical and explanatory tool. One of the axioms on which we can proceed to evaluate these impacts is that the mobile phone usage is one of the modern phenomena of the electronic century and digital world that has positive, negative, social and moral effects on its users. Surprisingly, most families who are aware of such impacts do not pay much attention to the negative aspects of this technology and provide their children with mobile phones. To examine such claims we used a cross sectional study that was done among 579 sample students who lived in city of Yazd as university students in 2012. The data were collected by a validated questionnaire. The questionnaire was designed in such a way to gather two sets of information as follows; 1- the demographic section provided general information about the targeted population; and, 2- the impact-evaluating section included questions aiming at gathering information about the impact of mobile phone on the students. The data were collected and then analyzed by SPSS. Some of the results indicate that 99 percent of students owned mobile phones. We considered the total score of socio-educational performance to be 24. The results indicated that the mean scores for the students’ performance were about 16/41. The mean performance score of the female and married students was more positive than that of the male and single students (P< 0/001 and P< 0/004, respectively). Also, there was a significant correlation between performance and GPA (Grade Points Average), on one hand and age and GPA (P< 0/001 and P< 0/002, respectively) of the students, on the other. Based on the research results, it can be argued that although mobile phone may have negative impact on the lives of the youth, especially the students, it also has benefits including it helps them to meet their communication needs and educational needs.