The novel coronavirus (COVID-19) has affected the education system at all levels around the world. Coping with the essentialities of online teaching and learning throughout the COVID-19 pandemic, this study aims to give insights into the interpretation of online teaching during the lockdown in Turkey. We applied an ‘opinions regarding online education’ survey (n = 1,007) to examine students’ attitudes towards online education. The participants were students having online classes due to COVID-19 lockdown at different universities in Turkey. Results showed that COVID-19 quarantine has influenced the academic performance of most participants to fluctuating degrees. Yet, most participants believed that online classes could not replace actual classes (n = 725; 72.0%), while only 10.1% of them believed online classes could replace face-to-face classes. Besides, students regularly attending the online classes have positive online education attitudes higher than those of the students who sometimes or never attend the lessons. Thus, this study presents a general illustration of ongoing online education activities during the lockdown and subsequently gives recommendations for future digital learning activities.

The present study aims to reveal whether gender, age, personality traits, chronotypes, and smartphone screen-time predict smartphone addiction. This study used the composite scale of morningness, big five inventory, and smartphone addiction scale for collecting data. Females showed higher levels of smartphone addiction than males. Furthermore, age was not a significant predictor of smartphone addiction. We revealed that conscientiousness and neuroticism were significant predictors of smartphone addiction while extraversion, agreeableness, and openness to experience were not. We also found that neurotic people had higher levels of smartphone addiction. We revealed in this study that people with evening chronotypes had higher levels of smartphone addiction. In conclusion, female, neurotic, eveningness chronotypes, and students who use smartphones at high levels were more addicted to smartphones.

This study investigated the mediating role of social connectedness in the relationship between excessive smartphone use and psychological adjustment problems. 484 young adults (M = 27.04 ± 4.36 years and 72.1% females) participated in this study. Using an online survey, participants completed the Multidimensional Smartphone Use Scale, Social Connectedness Scale-Revised, and Brief Psychological Adjustment-6. The results showed that smartphone use had a significant predictive effect on social connectedness and psychological adjustment problems. Social connectedness also had a significant predictive impact on psychological adjustment problems. Further, social connectedness partially mediated the relationship between smartphone use and psychological adjustment problems. The findings are fruitful in terms of presenting evidence for tailoring prevention and intervention programs to mitigate the adverse consequences of smartphone use on psychological health.

Living in an intensifying technological and digital environment makes people more engaged with smartphones and related internet platforms. Alongside its highly debated advantages and disadvantages, modern smartphone use is a global phenomenon which has been mainly debated within the context of cultural and technology relationships which also influence cross-cultural activities. Focusing on one of the modern factors (i.e., smartphone use) that impact human behavior, this article presents the development of a measure of the Multidimensional Smartphone Use Scale (MSUS) and tests its factor structure to offer a scale that covers smartphone-related problems from a broader perspective. Using an online survey, a total of 514 participants took part in the current study. The scale was developed to measure a multidimensional conception of smartphone use-related problems and behavioral disorders including nomophobia, ringxiety, textiety, and phubbing which were supported with exploratory and confirmatory factors analyses. The MSUS indicated good internal consistency reliability ranging from α = .75 to α = .89. This article presents the preliminary evidence regarding the reliability and validity of the MSUS which can be used in a wide range of settings to measure maladaptive modes of smartphone use and related behaviors.