Girls are at higher risk of becoming phone addicts, report says
Specifically, girls who drink are nearly twice as likely to develop an addiction to their phones, according to South Korean researchers.
Girls who drink, do worse at school and sleep less are at a higher risk of developing phone addiction, according to a South Korean study.
If 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 noted.
The study, which assessed 820 boys and 976 girls averaging just under age 15 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 and did not feel refreshed in the morning face a "significantly higher risk."
They also discovered that 40.4 percent of participants in the high-risk group reported sleeping six hours or less, compared with 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.
Fight the Power: Take a look at who's transforming the way we think about energy.
'Hello, humans': Google's Duplex could make Assistant the most lifelike AI yet.