Girls who drink, did worse at school and slept lesser are at a higher risk of developing phone addiction, according to a South Korean study.
Ed Jones/AFP/Getty ImagesIf you're a girl, you should perhaps pay more attention to your phone usage.
Girls are twice as likely as their male counterparts to develop an addiction to phones, Yonhap reported Tuesday, citing a report by South Korea's Ewha Womans University. This could be due to a higher usage of social networking services, it added.
The study, conducted on 820 boys and 976 girls averaging at 14.9 years of age in South Korea, found that 23.9 percent of girls are at risk of phone addiction. Only 15.1 percent of boys fall within the at-risk group.
In particular, the researchers found that female students who consumed alcohol, performed worse academically, did not feel refreshed in the morning and slept past midnight face a "significantly higher risk."
They also discovered that 40.4 percent of participants in the high-risk group reported sleeping six hours or lesser, compared to just 28.3 percent of those at lower risk.
"The quality of sleep in adolescence affects growth, emotional stability and learning skills," the researchers wrote. "Therefore, the management of smartphone addiction seems to be essential for proper sleeping habits."
"There is a critical need to develop a means of preventing smartphone addiction on a social level," they added.
The report is published in the Journal of Paediatrics and Child Health.
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