From a commodity to addiction: Are mobile phones valuable commodities or sources of addiction for freshman students?

Mobile phone use has increased exponentially on a global scale in all segments of society since the rise of the first mobile phones in 1970s. Although a wealth of research has been conducted to measure the effects of mobile phones on individuals, a few studies have been carried out to make a connection between similes and mobile phone use.  In this respect, this study examined habits of students on mobile phone use through similes at a private university located in Erbil, Iraq. Students employed food, drink, household items and people to illustrate their mobile phone dependence rate. A questionnaire, a survey and an interview were adopted to gather data. The data which were collected by employing a mixed method design were analyzed through MAXODA software program and SPSS 25. The findings of the study uncover that mobile phone are indispensable in their lives with varying reasons to take advantage of them. Additionally, students have unsubtle plans to reduce their daily usage by channeling their energy to social activities. The findings of this study can have some implications to acknowledge negative points of mobile phone use and adopt realistic strategies to break mobile phone addiction on adults systematically

The establishment of a mobile phone information security culture: linking student awareness and behavioural intent

The information security behaviour of technology users has become an increasingly popular research area as security experts have come to recognise that while securing technology by means of firewalls, passwords and offsite backups is important, such security may be rendered ineffective if the technology users themselves are not information security conscious. The mobile phone has become a necessity for many students but, at the same time, it exposes them to security threats that may result in a loss of information. Students in developing countries are at a disadvantage because they have limited access to information relating to information security threats, unlike their counterparts in more developed societies who can readily access this information from sources like the Internet. The developmental environment is plagued with challenges like access to the Internet or limited access to computers. The poor security behaviour exhibited by student mobile phone users, which was confirmed by the findings of this study, is of particular interest in the university context as most undergraduate students are offered a computer-related course which covers certain information security-related principles. During the restructuring of the South African higher education system, smaller universities and technikons (polytechnics) were merged to form comprehensive universities. Thus, the resultant South African university landscape is made up of traditional and comprehensive universities as well as universities of technology. Ordinarily, one would expect university students to have similar profiles. However in the case of this study, the environment was a unique factor which had a direct impact on students’ learning experiences and learning outcomes. Mbeki (2004) refers to two economies within South Africa the first one is financially sound and globally integrated, and the other found in urban and rural areas consists of unemployed and unemployable people who do not benefit from progress in the first economy. Action research was the methodological approach which was chosen for the purposes of this study to collect the requisite data among a population of university students from the ‘second economy’. The study focuses on the relationship between awareness and behavioural intention in understanding mobile phone user information security behaviour. The study concludes by proposing a behaviour profile forecasting framework based on predefined security behavioural profiles. A key finding of this study is that the security behaviour exhibited by mobile phone users is influenced by a combination of information security awareness and information security behavioural intention, and not just information security awareness