Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

A Pilot Study On Adolescent Mobile Phone Use, Indirect Mental Health Costs And Cultural Context Considerations – Report, Siobhan K. Yilmaz, Alok Bohara

Himalayan Research Papers Archive

Adolescents are being recognized as a generation, worldwide, that require different policy approaches to improve their health and wellbeing, including the adoption of mobile based health interventions (e.g. mHealth). While mHealth interventions are growing in popularity, many researchers/policy-makers have neglected assessing potential (indirect) costs/negative consequences from their use. Evidence from the developed world shows strong associations between cell phone use and negative mental health outcomes, but such findings are minimal in developing world contexts. Using primary data from a large-scale, school-based survey of 17-19-year-old adolescents in southwestern Nepal, this report provides background information to motivate additional work investigating the presence …