Smartphone use can ruin your leisure

Instead of entertainment, too much smartphone use can actually lead to leisure distress, feeling uptight, stressed and anxious during free time, new research has found.

An increased level of smartphone use is linked with a diminished experience of daily leisure, the findings showed.

"Being constantly connected to your phone is not likely to enhance your experience of leisure," said Jian Li from Kent State University in Ohio, the US.

"On the other hand, disconnecting for short period of time in order to seek more challenging leisure opportunities is likely to be beneficial," Li added.

The researchers from the Kent State University surveyed a random sample of 454 college students to examine how different types of cell phone users experience daily leisure.

An analysis revealed three distinct types of cell phone users: low-use extroverts, low-use introverts and a high-use group.

The high-use group averaged over 10 hours of cell phone use per day.

"The high-frequency cell phone user may not have the leisure skills necessary to creatively fill their free time with intrinsically rewarding activities," researcher Andrew Lepp explained.

"For such people, the ever-present smartphone may provide an easy, but less satisfying and more stressful, means of filling their time," Lepp added.

In comparison to the other two groups, the high-frequency cell phone users experienced significantly more leisure distress, the researchers noted.

The study appeared in the journal Computers in Human Behaviour.