Smartphone and Social Capital: Changing Lives and Lifestyles of the Youth

Abstract

The use of smartphones has increased globally at an astounding rate keeping diverse impacts on lifestyle and social relationships, particularly among the youths. As per evidence, the accessibility of online-based smartphone apps and larger attachment to virtual orientation vividly construct a platform of virtual community as a new form of social entity. This chapter discusses how smartphone use and the consequent virtual orientation affect the youths in developed and developing countries. The reviewed literature reveals that the personality traits of extrovert attitude and virtual orientation; the psychological traits of instant gratification, and seeking interest in self-admiration; and also, the social factors of problematic social relationships prompt the youths to enhance smartphone use at large. The review findings suggest that smartphone boosts up the communicative interactions with the families, close friends, relatives, and others providing emotional and instrumental benefits, while it reduces intimate relation and moral responsibility toward themselves. Another contributory effect of smartphone use on social bridging is that smartphone broadens multi-friendship relations, student–teacher relation, the opportunity for civic and political participation, and diverse social occasioning that eventually generate academic support, reciprocal achievement, update information on social safety, and material exchange with the expanded social networking, virtual engagement, and online-group connections. Despite having immense benefits, the rising personality disorder, psychological discontent, and the dis-embedded social relationship have been seen as the degenerative outcomes of smartphone dependency. The chapter finally provides some suggestions for potential risk reduction to underwrite the cultural development of the youths.