Smartphone Usage and its Applications among School Going Children (5-16 Years) in Lahore, Pakistan

Objective: To analyze the most used applications on smartphone among school going children (5-16 years). Study Design and Setting: Descriptive cross sectional study comprised of five months (April 2017 to July 2017); concerned community survey i.e. door to door data collection method was carried out in Lahore, Pakistan. Material and Methods: Multistage cluster sampling technique was used. 6200 school going children were selected, 4030 (65%) respond to the study and remaining 2170 (35%) do not respond to the study (excluded from the research). Among 4030 school going children, 2889 (71.7%) were smartphone users (included in the analysis) and 1141 (28.3%) do not use smartphone (excluded in the analysis). Among 2889 school going smartphone users, 1993 (69%) were short term smartphone users and 896 (31%) were long term smartphone users. Descriptive statistics and Bivariate logistic regression was applied on the gathered data. Results: Significant associations were found. The use of smartphone for messaging have p-value = 0.19, for Facebook p-value = 0.11, for WhatsApp p-value = 0.043, for playing games p-value < 0.001, for listening music p-value = 0.049, for watching videos and movies p-value = 0.030, for alarm purpose p-value = 0.001 and for camera purpose p-value = 0.015. Conclusion: The research findings showed that most used applications on smartphone among school going children (5-16 years) were WhatsApp and used smartphone for playing games, listening music, watching videos and movies, alarm and camera purpose with respect to which the study was concise.