Mobile Abuse in University Students and profiles of victimization and aggression

The vast majority of young people have mobile phones. This has become a must-have item in their lives, with traditional socialization spaces displaced by virtual ones. They use their mobile phones for many hours a day, to the detriment of their psychological and social functioning, showing greater vulnerability to abusive or excessive use, and more likely to become problematic or addicted users. This paper aims to study the impact of mobile phone abuse in a sample of college students, assessing the social, personal, and communicational realms and deepening understanding of the different cyberbullying profiles, analyzing who has more personal and social problems using mobiles: victims or aggressors. Whether the number of hours of mobile phone use has an effect on these problems will also be explored. The sample (1,200 students) was selected by multistage cluster sampling among the faculties of the University of Extremadura. Data were obtained through Victimization (CYB-VIC) and Aggression (CYB-AGRES) through the mobile phone scales, and the Questionnaire of Experiences related to Mobile (CERM). The results show that mobile phone abuse generates conflicts in young people of both sexes, although girls have more communication and emotional problems than boys. In addition, age, field of knowledge, victim/aggressor profile, and hours of mobile phone use are crucial variables in the communication and emotional conflicts arising from the misuse of mobile.